Leaking coolant

lobster

lobster

Went for a ride yesterday. Bike was fine, certainly didn't notice it getting hot. Anyway, get home, park it in garage and forget about it. Come back a few hours later and I find a small pool of water under the bike. Turns out it's coolant. More detailed inspection reveals the expansion tank is dry and the rad is only half full.
So I take the side panels off and start poking about. The bizarre thing is I couldn't see where it was coming from at all. So I contented myself by doing up all the jubilee clips really tight. One did seem a bit loose.
Anyway, not had a chance to ride it again since, so not yet sure if its fixed, but is there anything else I should be looking at?
fredrik

fredrik

As I got off the bike this evening I noticed that the fan was on and that the coolant was down way below min. I unscrewed the cap to fill it up but it's already overflowing. -so, I need to bleed the system, correct?

This really worries me since I know that JP had problems with the cooling system which KTM supposedly had sorted out.
fredrik

fredrik

always be careful of the SD'''R's cooling system, maybe Sam or Ian will weigh in and they may know the procedure as do I, you must get the front tyre 21" higher than the rear to properly bleed the system, this usually takes 2 people to achieve this in a safe manner. They are a wee bit tricky to bleed metinks, a nice long knee dragging corner at 50 miles per hour is good, I have done this a couple of times, never let the beast run over normal operating temperature no matter what, or else you WILL blow a head gasket and or damage your engine.
fredrik

fredrik

21inches above the rear is going to be very tricky in my garage. Will it be ok to drive the 6miles to the workshop as long as I watch the temp?
fredrik

fredrik

6 miles at what speed, you should not stop if at all possible. you will need to keep an eagle eye on the temp gage and you are taking your bikes life into your own hands, the reason I say this is cos, the temp gage is not absolute, you can not trust it 100% cos of air being in the system, the temp sending unit does not measure air temp accurately and will give you a false sense of security especially if the temp sender is high in the engines cooing system.

If you are sensitive to her you can place your hand on the radiator and feel the bubbling going on, you never want to run her if she wants to puke anything out! spewing is dangerous. Basically her telling you that something is seriously wrong here and we need a medic.
fredrik

fredrik

thanks for your help joe.

you're of course right, I should not risk it... I'll sort something out, not quite sure what though....
fredrik

fredrik

Post missing.

RRR

RRR

Post missing.

fredrik

fredrik

Post missing.