Are your bikes running hot? Mine hit 255 f!

[Cruizin]

Went for a short ride yesterday,pulled up to driveway and let it idle for a minute while I opened garage door. The temp shot up to 255 degrees F and the fan kicked on. The fan was not lowering the temp at all. I shut her down in the garage and let it cool off.

 

255 degrees is hot. It was 87 degrees outside. 

 

What are your experiences so far? Anyone seen their bikes get that hot?

[Aleksandar13]

Mine never did that... Runs pretty cool.. You might have air in the system or not enough water.? 

Aleks 

[XcTwo]

While I've never let mine sit stationary for longer than a normal warm up, I'm not seeing this. I live in AZ and it's been pretty hot - say around 100f. In traffic, it gets up to 220 or so and the fan comes on and cools things down. The hottest I've seen is 222.

 

Let me go start it up and let it sit - be right back. (it must be 90+ right now)

[ADVUSA]

36 minutes ago, Cruizin said:

255 degrees is hot. It was 87 degrees outside. 

 

I wondered about this and did check the manual. What exact steps / buttons on the the dash do you need to sequence to bring up the coolant temperature? NOTE: I don't have the bike yet!

 

Edited June 22, 2020 by ADVUSA

[sbeck09]

12 minutes ago, ADVUSA said:

I wondered about this and did check the manual. What exact steps / buttons on the the dash do you need to sequence to bring up the coolant temperature? NOTE: I don't have the bike yet!

 

You just scroll through the menus with the two buttons on the top left of the dash. It even has outside temp!

 

@Cruizin Mine got as high as 233F this weekend at about 6500ft of elevation, but the fan pulled it right back down to 210F. Ambient temps were right about 90F and we were going slow in the rocks.

 

Coolant always gets hotter when the engine is off with any liquid cooled vehicle so don't pay attention to it if the engine was off. The coolant needs to be circulating. 

[ScorpionT16]

That's around 123 Celsius. It's been 33c+ here for a bit, and in standstill, at around 102-103c the fan kicks in and it drops to under 100c pretty quick. Highest I've seen on the temp reading is around 108c, this is all using 15w50 recommended by Yamaha

Edited June 22, 2020 by ScorpionT16

[XcTwo]

Fan turned on at 221 and quickly brought it down to 210 and the fan stopped. Here you go:

 

[TimmyTheHog]

for watercool, I would say that is pretty typical.

 

my old airheads used to run near 130+ C (266 F) if not higher sometimes.

Edited June 22, 2020 by TimmyTheHog

[T7lee]

A sealed pure water system on an engine can often break 100c whithout breaking a sweat, the boiling point in a sealed system is raised significantly, now add that 30 to 40% of your coolant is glycol based & you can up the boiling by a significant amount again. 

110 to 140c, the worrying part is your fan did not expel any heat from the coil, for that reason id look in to it further. 

Possibly running a lean or wrong coolant mix, blockage in the coil or failing coolant pump. 

 

My mt will offten break 110c sitting idle for a period, even in 15c outside air temps. 

[Steve White]

1 hour ago, Cruizin said:

Went for a short ride yesterday,pulled up to driveway and let it idle for a minute while I opened garage door. The temp shot up to 255 degrees F and the fan kicked on. The fan was not lowering the temp at all. I shut her down in the garage and let it cool off.

 

255 degrees is hot. It was 87 degrees outside. 

 

 

What are your experiences so far? Anyone seen their bikes get that hot?

 

My T7 runs up to 100c then the fan cuts in, but l read somewhere they do run a bit on the warm side

[Stevoh]

I'm wondering if another auxiliary cooling fan might be an option.

During a ride through some fire trails I was forced to take a detour through some thick bush as the track ahead was blocked, quite hard slow and heavy going, quite quickly the fan cut in and the bike was running extremely hot to the point where the engine started pinging, I didn't get to check the temp. as I was to busy staying upright and wanted to get back to the fire trail.

Outside temp was about 20c.

 

[sbeck09]

Omg you guys all talking in C instead of F is messing my head up so bad! 

[Stevoh]

Lol, 20c /68f

[tj3089]

The hottest I've seen mine is around 215 but it usually stays around 190-200 while riding. I take back roads and don't sit in traffic, maybe that helps?  Ambient temperature is usually around 98⁰ F when I get a chance to ride. 

[Cruizin]

1 hour ago, sbeck09 said:

Omg you guys all talking in C instead of F is messing my head up so bad! 

Me too, but we are to blame, not them. As, we are the only country in the world not on the metric system. 

[sbeck09]

43 minutes ago, Cruizin said:

Me too, but we are to blame, not them. As, we are the only country in the world not on the metric system. 

Yeah I just have to keep googling every time I'm reading through. Cracks me up, not meaning to be a stick in the mud.

[Stevoh]

[UtahJack]

@Cruizin

So what happened, did you get the problem figured out?

Did you get it fixed?

Was it a bike issue or did the nut behind the handlebars come loose?

[Cruizin]

1 hour ago, UtahJack said:

@Cruizin

So what happened, did you get the problem figured out?

Did you get it fixed?

Was it a bike issue or did the nut behind the handlebars come loose?

I'm working 12 hour days 6 days a week now. Summer is crazy time for me. 

[UtahJack]

@Cruizin

Ouch, I remember those days, but not no more, my wife still works though, but she works three on and four off, so not so bad.

What kind of work do you do, if you don't mind me asking?

None of your business, is a perfectly acceptable response.

Or something cool like, "I could tell you, but than I would have to kill everybody that read this."

 

Let us all know what it ends up being the cause of the overheating problem.

Edited June 25, 2020 by UtahJack

[Cruizin]

19 minutes ago, UtahJack said:

@Cruizin

Ouch, I remember those days, but not no more, my wife still works though, but she works three on and four off, so not so bad.

What kind of work do you do, if you don't mind me asking?

None of your business, is a perfectly acceptable response.

Or something cool like, "I could tell you, but than I would have to kill everybody that read this."

 

Let us all know what it ends up being the cause of the overheating problem.

HVAC sales and it's 90 degrees f here for the next few months. We are running our asses off , at least I'm making bank. 

[Cruizin]

Just now, Cruizin said:

HVAC sales and it's 90 degrees f here for the next few months. We are running our asses off , at least I'm making bank. 

Also, the cause of the problem is that they fan doesnt kick on until lie 205 or 215 degrees. When rising slow or idling, the engine gets hot when it's hot out. 

 

I'll have @2 Wheel DynoWorksDynoWorks fix that by programming the fan to kick on at 180 or so.  Off-road riding in technical terrian is slow going and letting the engine get this hot just won't work off-road. 

[UtahJack]

@Cruizin

Correct me if I am wrong, but didn't most people say their fans kicked in at 212 degrees and cooled their bike down to below 210 degrees rather quickly regardless of their speed? 

[UtahJack]

@Cruizin

You might want to be careful how low you kick the fan in, some engines are designed to run a certain temp and forcing them to run too cool actually increase wear.

[sbeck09]

You can absolutely overcool a motor...to a point. This typically is more an issue with thermostats than fans because the Thermostat is there to regulate the minimum operating temperature. That would technically prevent the fan from lowing temperatures below it's open point.

 

I think 180F is too low since my bike has been highway cruising at 195ish in 110F ambient heat. So the fan would never turn off and that causes a couple issues. I personally would like my fan to switch on at about 210-215F since it doesn't seem to cut on currently until about 225F on mine. 

 

I'm disappointed that PWM (Pulse Width Modulation = infinitely variable speed control) technology hasn't become the standard for motorcycle cooling fans like it has in cars. You can do so much more to help cool the radiator without ever changing the on/off points. I've been working on this exact thing with my racetruck this week.