Under Pressure

So it's Friday, four days before I run out of time and I'm stood there looking at the bike in the afternoon sun dumping it's coolant out onto the road again. The fan is running madly but the temperature gauge is obstinately refusing to drop back down whilst more and more water splatter my shoes. Annoyingly I'd just spent four hours working on the bike to make sure this didn't happen.

This is A Problem. 


Rewind back a day and I trundle up to Plymouth and back, a round trip of just over 120 miles to say hello to some friends, make sure the bike is running well and nothing falls off. The first thing I notice is that even before I've got to Liskard a half hour up the road that the seat is really uncomfortable. As in a wooden plank with steel rivets in would be preferable to this. The second, and slightly more concerning right now, is that the temperature gauge is permanently just below the redline. It's been that way for the past ten minutes and every so often dips a bit then climbs back up.

After stopping for an hour in Plymouth the bike starts happily with the temperature at the bottom of the scale and slowly climbs up to normal. So far, so good. But when I cross the Tamar, back into Gods Own County the needle is nuzzling the redline again and does the same little rhumba up and down all the way home.


Now why would it do that, the bike is running fine? I could just ignore it and hope everything will be ok, or I could chose to investigate.


I'm pretty certain there should be some coolant in there.


And I'm also pretty certain there ought to be clean coolant in there without all the gunge. The Haynes manual says that a GPZ500s should contain 1.7 litres of coolant, I wonder how much is left.


Oh dear...

So it would seem that some of it has escaped, or I didn't get enough in, in the first place when I refilled it. I can pretty much discount the latter, although I don't think I got the complete 1.7l in. So I'm guessing something is blocking the system somewhere meaning water gets trapped in the block or head and then gets  boiled into steam and forces it way out of the expansion tank.


With the attendance of a small but enthusiastic helper I filled the system with radiator flush, left it to burble and fizz around the system for ten minutes as per the instructions then gently filled the system from the bottom upwards with pure water meaning there ought to be no airlocks anywhere inside.

After tea I took the bike for a short ride around the village and for a quick wizz up and down the dual carriageway. On getting home I found I was back to square one after it had dumped most of the coolant out again. Not good. 

Not good at all. Permission to panic sir?



 



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