
Originally Posted by
camchain
Thermostat sits inline where your hoses join under the fuel tank.
I've heard the big-banger katoom is a bit more prone to boil ups. I've had my 200 pretty hot when running hard in deep sand though, & have thought about removing the thermostat for summer. Advantage as I understand is improved flow rate at this point. Never eyeballed it but certainly must be something to it if Birchy does it. I prefer the idea of my bike getting up to operating temp faster but might try removing it for summer.
Would pay to check your hoses for kinks that might interfere with flow as well. The hose coming off the head on mine used to be a bit too long and this caused a pronounced flat spot in it at the tightest bend.
When I first got mine, it lost a little coolant every ride so I ordered a new rad cap. On close look I noticed cap wasn't sitting square & flat. Rad filler neck had taken a knock at some point and lip was a bit distorted. Ali on these rads is very soft (was easy to straighten out) & no lost coolant since.
Barty made a good point about keeping the fins/cores as clean as possible. You can't hit 'em with pressure washer so they may not be as clean as they appear at a glance. When I did my top end I soaked my rads (twice) overnight in buckets of hot water laundry detergent & nappisan. Gave 'em a good swish back & forth in water. A surprising amount of extra crap came off them. Even a thin layer of this probably not good for heat dissapation. I even went to trouble of straightening out the bent fins to make 'em pretty again, also easier to wash & less likely to hold dirt.
Re what Danger noted about water being the superior part of your coolant recipe. I've heard of that before. Apparently water 'sits better' (for want of a better term) against hot metal & enables better heat transfer? I use that 'Engine Ice' brand stuff and was going to try a 25/75 ratio last summer but it says on pack to leave it 50/50, so I didn't try it. Can't really see the harm though. We don't really need the antifreeze factor much here & you'd think 25% ratio of whatever anti-corrosion agent is in there should be enough if using distilled water? Be interested to know more about this. You don't worry about corrosion 4 stroke?
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