Do RF900s & several other bikes run too Cold?

[F5 Dave]

Yeah that was the problem with old water cooling, they had great tracts of water passage. Far better to have slim walled cooling passages so the water doesn’t just shear through the middle leaving the surface water insulating the hot bits. Thinner passages would have cured the mini as well by removing this surface water replacing it with cool water even though it would have been moving faster still through the head.

Electric pump is best idea, but would it be as stone axe reliable? In the old days no. Now? Well maybe it is time it can be made cheaply & reliably enough.

[pete376403]

You can get one here http://www.racerpartswholesale.com/elecpump.htm
Davies Craig is an Aussie company

[F5 Dave]

Yeah they have been making them for GP bikes for a while. I was making one up for my bucket well over 10 years ago, but couldn’t be bothered with the hassle of forgetting to turn it on & needing a battery on a total loss ignition etc. I had a bilge pump for a boat. A friend turned up using the same pump on his sidecar a while later so it would have worked, I was going to make a automatic controller when a friend pointed out you could buy a temp gauge that had preset alarms so could be modded to do the same thing. I bought the temp gauge but it didn’t turn out to be very reliable at any rate.

[Morepower]

A couple of questions.

Where is the temp guage pickup ? is it in radiator or the thermostat housing ?

On a 97 TL its in the radiator on 98 and later in the thermostat housing.
A 97 TL will read in the 50's on normal riding. The Thermostat however will be keeping the endine in the low 80's ( which is where it should be).

Problem with the 97TL is that the fuel injection sees the radiator , not engine temp and runs the richer fuel map . They fixed this in 98. Could the RF which is from the same era had a running change ? causing some to read hotter .

If the RF is carburetted I wouldnt worry to much.

Dave

[F5 Dave]

It is carburetted so no EFI shenanigans going on there & the pickup is in the thermostat housing.

By the way on the Factory website he mentions TLs & their overheating in traffic & suggests a lower setting thermal switch for turning the fans on, apparently available from auto electrical supply places.

[F5 Dave]

Well it's been a couple of months, but I have finally got around to pulling the thermostat housing out of my YZF750

(PS the RF has been running well on the new hotter thermostat & getting up to temp even running acceptably whilst in the glacial SI for the Brass)

Either way I pull the thermostat out of the 750 & found it was a 71deg C unit!!

Crumbs, no wonder it has trouble getting off the stop! An 82deg C one (FZR1000) I had lying around was slotted in place, so look forward to seeing how it goes (when the bike is back on the road, paintjob just happening).