The Haste 4th of July update!

Post Reply
User avatar
Haste
Posts: 67
Joined: Thu May 24, 2012 10:39 pm

The Haste 4th of July update!

Post by Haste » Wed Jul 04, 2012 3:27 pm

So tuesday was eventful to say the least. Ill keep the story short as it spans a 12 hour period.

Woke up, see that my money is cleared in my account and i can go buy some bikey toys. First stop is pepboys and i remind myself im only going to spend $20 dollars, no more than that... No problem right?

Holy shit no.

Still thinking my budget means anything i grab a can of sea foam on the off chance it clears my rough idle. Run out and guestimate how much i should pour into the tank, maybe go a bit rich but the bike runs fine and everything is awesome.

Next i head to home-depot and grab some Plasti-dip in a good color, black.
Image
(its come down in price a bit since it was first available, $5)

This is the stuff ive been dying to use for a few months, but a project like this was always on the back-burner due to how busy ive been and having more critical issues to take care of than cosmetic changes. Today was awesome though and i thought id do my first cosmetic adjustments to the bike.

Get home in a hurry, bike is still strong and ready for battle.

So i rip off my windshield and chain guard and start a VERY detailed cleaning process so that i have a good surface to spray. About an hour later im outside mounting my results and taking pictures to show off on the forums:
Image
Image
Whats interesting about the last picture is that the tire on the rear isnt the same one i showed up at the meet-up.

Let me tell you why. :evil:

So as im mounting and ogling my new found cosmetic changes i look down at my tire and see that i no longer have ANY tread left on the center line of my rear tire. It wouldnt have really been a big issue if this process had happened slowly, but it didnt. Within 48 hours my tire went from safely rideable to full self-destruct mode. I suspect this is because of the age of the tires and the fact that it is being stored out in this hellish heat.

No big deal though, ill just call a few shops and see where i can get one put on quickly before i have to head to school and turn in a 25%-of-my-grade paper.

Nope.

All the shops i call are slammed and want $250 for mid-grade tires + install. So panic mode is starting to activate, i wanted to get to school and hour early and proof my paper one last time. I find a shop that promises on the phone to have a tire in stock (conti-motion 170/60 17") and have it installed in under an hour for $200. Im so pressed for time, i take the deal... not even enough time to google the rear tire and see what im getting into.

Shoot over to mid-cities motorcycle shop and begin the process. Surprise time! Whoever owned the bike before me put the wrong size tire on it. The bike is suppose to have a 180/55 according to the manual. Thankfully mid-cities has one in stock so we continue on.

The bike rolls out (looking amazing i might add) and the mechanic pulls me to the side as im paying to tell me some more interesting things about my bike. Specifically that my rear axle was installed backwards by the previous owner (does this mean anything was damaged?).

Okay so fine, thank god, everything is back to normal on my bike and i can maybe even get to school earlier than an hour so i can perfect my paper.

FUCK NO.

Pulling up to the apartment to grab my backpack, kick-stand down, wait what the fuck is that? Oh i figured out what it was very quickly. Radiator fluid shooting out of my bikes sub-frame drainage hose like a god-damn money shot in a Ron Jeremy porno. What. The. Fuck.

By now, im in full battle mode.

Within 15 minutes and a quick tap-water top-off i know what i must do. 25 miles away is a garage. It has distilled water, tools, water wetter, and a box fan. This is my only hope of making it to school on time. My radiator over-flow is rumbling within 100 feet of leaving the apartment.

My baby is boiling over, but why, why now? (if you know id love to hear wh

Within 1/4 of a mile im having serious issues keeping the temperature under 215 degrees. Traffic is dead-locked all the way to the free-way entrance because of construction in my area. Its 3 o'clock, peak Texas heat. Im running out of time and radiator fluid. I have a emergency water bottle in my backpack to dump into the radiator over-flow, but its just not an option yet. Stopping on the side of the road to dump that in would be only to call a tow truck and concede defeat and take a 0% on a massive grade. Im sitting at a dead stop in traffic, eyes pinned on my temp gauge.

BEAST MODE ACTIVATED.

Volume up on the mp3 player, shift into first, hyper aggressive lane-splitting. In the back of my mind im remembering that im on BRAND-NEW rubber, i have to watch my throttle closely. In the back of my mind, im still trying to think of all possible causes of the radiator problem because once i get to the house i have to attack this problem like a mechanical tiger. All the while im pouring sweat, even through my headphones i can occasionally hear a honk or two. I dont like to do this, but my hand is forced. I know its irresponsible how im behaving, but i know that if i can pull this off i can save my bike and my grade in one final swoop.

Finally through all the traffic and the on-ramp is ahead of me. I blast it. Strong but smooth roll-on to 8k then 4 up-shifts to 6th to cruise. My bikes temp is finally falling below 230 degrees. Its slow... inefficient. The problem is getting worse, im on borrowed time and gambling with my favorite possession. I cant get it to stay below 220 degrees even at 60mph. I bump up to 85mph, its coming down slightly... Im stable at 215 if i just maintain 85mph. If i go faster she gets hot again, if i slow down she gets even hotter... At 215 i only have the most narrow window of flexibility in my speed changes, if i hit traffic on the freeway im fucked.

Lots of prayer for the next 20 miles. Ill skip some of the motorcycle gymnastics i had to perform to maintain my ideal speed in progressively thickening traffic, but i will say that i cut my chicken strips in half that day.

The last 5 mile portion is the worst. Stop-light, stop signs, old people in cars, etc. In the final 2 turns till i could have the bike off im already off the scale. The thermometer doesn't read temps as hot as my bike is right now.

Bike parked, i go into the motorcycle emergency room and get cracking.

Fairings off, signs of radiator fluid being expelled directly from the pressure release valve on the radiator cap.
No obvious leaks elsewhere.

The fluid boiled out, but why?
Why did it pick today?
Did the Seafoam increase the operating temperature of the bike enough to assist in the boiling process?
Was there enough untreated distilled water left from my flushing to dilute the mix that i added to cause the boiling point to drop?
Is the spring on the radiator cap so weak that my system lost pressure and lowered the boiling temperature?

I don't know.

Within one hour, i added a new mix of water wetter (stronger mix this time, 2x recommended), replaced the radiator cap with a similar car cap that was rated at 1/2 a pound stronger. Instantly the bike was back to normal the beast was tamed. Ii had one hour to be at school. I was in Crowley and needed to be in Arlington.

No time for fairings, today shes a street-fighter.

Ill skip the details of this part other than, i made it to school in <30 minutes and raced an off duty cop on an FZ6.



TL;DR
I painted my windscreen Tuesday. :icon_thumbsup:
Image

User avatar
NickS
Posts: 659
Joined: Mon Aug 17, 2009 8:50 pm
Achievement count: 0
Location: Burleson

Re: The Haste 4th of July update!

Post by NickS » Wed Jul 04, 2012 5:15 pm

This actually makes me feel much better about my day, which I had previously though was going poorly. FWIW, for no apparent reason at all today, I got all faint and nauseous while driving my car, and then vomited explosively all over myself with no real warning. Then I drove 20 miles sweating profusely and covered in puke. I think yours sounds worse, so way to be a trooper. Hope all is well with your bike.
'08 Kawasaki Concours 14
'10 Kawasaki Z1000

User avatar
Striple
Posts: 3636
Joined: Tue Jun 01, 2010 1:28 pm
Riding Style: Licensed Racer - Expert
Achievement count: 42
Location: Haltom City, TX

Re: The Haste 4th of July update!

Post by Striple » Wed Jul 04, 2012 6:31 pm

That was quite the day you had (you too, Nick!). Glad to hear that it all worked out in the end, despite the substantial amount of road bumps you encountered.

I don't mean to be negative, but I have a strong feeling that your radiator troubles are not yet over with. I'm also uncertain about the history of that problem, but I would probably feel inclined to bite the bullet and have Cycle Werkz take a shot at diagnosing the problem. It may save you money in the long run, and - more importantly - prevent you from getting a possible aneurysm in the future.
Current: 10 Triumph Street Triple | 08 Kawasaki Concours 14 | 07 Yamaha YZF-R6 (Race) | 05 Suzuki DR650 SE | 04 Yamaha TT-R 125LE
Previous: 08 Honda CBR1000RR LE | 07 Suzuki SV650S #1 | 07 Suzuki SV650S #2 | 05 Triumph Speed Triple | 03 Honda CRF 450R

User avatar
Haste
Posts: 67
Joined: Thu May 24, 2012 10:39 pm

Re: The Haste 4th of July update!

Post by Haste » Wed Jul 04, 2012 10:47 pm

Striple wrote: ...I have a strong feeling that your radiator troubles are not yet over...
I got home an hour ago from work and finally had time to google-fu the problem. So far this all makes perfect sense.

A quick run-up to this ongoing radiator battle:

Initially bike ran fine, but go extremely hot very quickly at stops. Sometimes the fan couldnt stop the temp rise if it was mid-day. Although not truly a major issue i wanted to attack this before we hit peak texas heat.

Water wetter and distilled water did the trick. Suddenly the heat problems vanished with a new fluid in the radiator. Victory. Slowly... very slowly, the problem started developing again. By yesterday, it was a full blown disaster.

Because of my time constraints i couldnt do my usual google magic to find a silver bullet. I needed to use the tools i had available to treat the symptoms, not the cause... just needed to limp it around till i could find a time to research.

Tonight, i had the right questions and got lucky on a few searches.

Current and functional hypothesis:

Anti-freeze increases the boiling point of water, enough that even if my system isnt pressurized i would have the sense and time to shut off the bike. This explains very easily how i was operating at far higher temperatures and not expelling any antifreeze out of the overflow.

The anti-freeze functioned, but was treating symptoms. Because of how thick the antifreeze was that i pulled from my first flush im betting the previous owner had the same issue and went way beyond a 50/50 mix to achieve a higher boiling point. This also explains why the bike was so insanely difficult to shed heat. Anti-freeze mixtures beyond 50/50 actually start to strongly inhibit heat transfer (google).

This explains all the previous event perfectly. Its shocking to read this and suddenly understand how this ball started rolling.

But why did the problem get worse with water wetter?
This part took some experimenting to prove, thankfully the scientist inside me was smart enough adjust one variable at a time to find the answer tonight rather than on the road.

Initially when i added water wetter the problem vanished. Seriously, it was very very difficult to get my temp up to 210 without sitting for awhile. I felt the problem had been solved, but like the previous owner i had only treated symptoms and not the problem.

Its all too easy to read water wetter and interpret the bottle to read as an anti-freeze replacement. I dont think this is intentional in the slightest, but for rookies like me its an understandable mistake. What me and many others look at the bottle and see is that graph on the side that shows distiled + water wetter drops engine temperatures by 20 degrees.

This is true, and in my experience not an exaggeration.
The problem is that it DOES NOT increase the boiling temperature of water. For a normal system operating at 1.1 bar of pressure (average motorcycle pressure, stock) this means that a wetter+distiled is going to boil at aprox 243 degrees. A system that is operating unpressurized is going to boil at roughly 216 degrees. Keep in mine i rarely, if ever, got up to 216. The only time i would stray that hot is during 5pm traffic in the 100+ heat.

Knowing this i can start to piece together the problem...

The wetter fixed the symptom amazingly, and because of how well it transferred heat i never had any concern that my system was boiling. During those insane hot 5pm stop and go 30 minute sessions once a day, i was reaching 220-225... enough to boil an unpressurized system.

The problem was slow to return because i wasnt losing fluid quickly, squirts here and there on highway 30 once a day.

Once the issue was too obvious to not see i started measuring the temprature that id start seeing boil over. 216 and above and my overflow would rumble with the boiling that was happening inside. I didnt know it at the time, but this temperature was important because this is the temperature that water wetter + distiled will boil in an unpressurized system.

Yesterday during my speed fixing i pulled the radiator cap and handed it to my dad to hold while i flush, mixed and filled the radiator to find the problem.

"This thing looks terrible, and the spring is so weak." he said.

Looking along the side of the bike i could see that the fluid had been escaping primarily through the radiator cap and not the over flow. We rushed to auto-zone to find a radiator cap. None in stock and none with the same pressure rating. I was rolling dice and opted to get a car radiator cap that looked similar but was rated .5 pounds higher pressure. It had to be sawed to fit on the radiator, ive got a new one coming in the mail already.

Earlier i had kept the old cap because if this new one fell off or some weird shit i wanted a backup in my bike trunk. Earlier tonight when i got home and read all that google, i replaced the old cap... and guess what? The problem returned.




One and a half months of research and tooling and talking... because of an aged radiator cap.
:SideSplittingLaughter:
Image

User avatar
DemonDuck
Honorary Club Member
Honorary Club Member
Posts: 7623
Joined: Sat Apr 03, 2010 6:21 am
Riding Style: Intermediate Track Rider
Achievement count: 40
Location: Litchfield, Il

Re: The Haste 4th of July update!

Post by DemonDuck » Thu Jul 05, 2012 1:16 am

Glad you found the problem though.
~Jeremiah~ AKA DemonDuck
Live your life that the fear of death can never enter your heart.

2012 BMW S1000RR Red/White
2000 SV650 Track bike
2008 Kawasaki ZX-14 - Sold
1982 Honda CB750K - Sold