• Hi everyone,

    As you all know, Coffee (Dean) passed away a couple of years ago. I am Dean's ex-wife's husband and happen to have spent my career in tech. Over the years, I occasionally helped Dean with various tech issues.

    When he passed, I worked with his kids to gather the necessary credentials to keep this site running. Since then (and for however long they worked with Coffee), Woodschick and Dirtdame have been maintaining the site and covering the costs. Without their hard work and financial support, CafeHusky would have been lost.

    Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve been working to migrate the site to a free cloud compute instance so that Woodschick and Dirtdame no longer have to fund it. At the same time, I’ve updated the site to a current version of XenForo (the discussion software it runs on). The previous version was outdated and no longer supported.

    Unfortunately, the new software version doesn’t support importing the old site’s styles, so for now, you’ll see the XenForo default style. This may change over time.

    Coffee didn’t document the work he did on the site, so I’ve been digging through the old setup to understand how everything was running. There may still be things I’ve missed. One known issue is that email functionality is not yet working on the new site, but I hope to resolve this over time.

    Thanks for your patience and support!

TR650 overheating

MadDogTR

MadDogTR

Husqvarna
AA Class
Ok, I've got almost 1,000 miles on the bike, so I would think any air bubbles would be gone by now. I was coming home from work the other day in about 108 F. weather (normal for around here) and after about 30 miles the bike starts spitting all over me. I'm assuming this was from the overflow outlet. Anyway, I pull over for about 2 minutes and the temp. light still won't go out. I am not very patient when it comes to waiting for a bike to cool in 108 F. temps, so I get back on the bike and ride home. After about a mile the temp. light finally goes off and I finish my last mile home with the bike acting like nothing happened. 40 some odd years of riding and this is the first bike I've ever had overheat...


... if you don't count a few Spanish bikes seizing in the early days.

So what now? I haven't even looked at the bike since. Too hot to work on bikes, and not too hot to ride the others. I'm thinking a booster or wuku might help. But I would really hate for this thing to overheat sometime when I am in the middle of Death Valley.
 
RidingDonkeys said:
I don't think the booster or wuka would help this problem at all. Did you ever bleed the radiator?
Click to expand...

It seems to be heat related, and a booster or wuka is supposed to make the bike run richer i.e. cooler, right?

But no, I didn't bleed the radiator. How do I do that on this bike? I've heard the overflow tank is higher than the radiator fill. ???
 
Open the cap with the bike cool, crank it up, and let it idle to temp. When the fans kick on, you should start seeing some air bubbles come out and the fluid level drop. Let it run for a couple of minutes until there are no more bubbles, kill the engine, and put the cap on. Several people have had this issue, and the air bubbles are not working their way out on their own. This seems to be the fix.
 
Mine did the exact same thing with similar mileage. Bleeding the radiator fixed my problem... Until I dropped the bike a few times and got a slow, (almost imperceptible) radiator leak. Then I had to replace the radiator :)
 
Since this does not happen to all bikes... I wonder if the bikes that are having problems have been on their side?:thinking:
 
HuskyDude said:
Since this does not happen to all bikes... I wonder if the bikes that are having problems have been on their side?:thinking:
Click to expand...

Mine has never been on it's side and it had an overheating episode. That happened when i picked up the bike after it's 1000km service. I think it's possible that bikes that haven't overheated either haven't overheated YET, or were predelivered by someone who saw a problem with the husqvarna predelivery procedure for filling the radiator and bled all of the air out before it caused any issue.
 
HuskyDude said:
Since this does not happen to all bikes... I wonder if the bikes that are having problems have been on their side?:thinking:
Click to expand...

Unless mine was on its side at the shop before I bought it, it has never been on its side. Mine overheated twice and I took it to the dealer both times for them to work it out. Last time was about 500 miles ago when they burped out a huge bubble. Seems to be good now.
 
RidingDonkeys said:
Open the cap with the bike cool, crank it up, and let it idle to temp. When the fans kick on, you should start seeing some air bubbles come out and the fluid level drop. Let it run for a couple of minutes until there are no more bubbles, kill the engine, and put the cap on. Several people have had this issue, and the air bubbles are not working their way out on their own. This seems to be the fix.
Click to expand...

The radiator cap? Or the reservoir cap?

HuskyDude said:
Since this does not happen to all bikes... I wonder if the bikes that are having problems have been on their side?:thinking:
Click to expand...

Mine hasn't been on it's side. Which side do you think would be better for burping the radiator? ;)
 
  1. Open radiator cap and start bike.
  2. Let idle so that the fan comes on and the thermostat opens.
  3. Let run another minute then shut off.
  4. Open resevoir cap AND STAND THE BIKE UPRIGHT (just off the kick stand...not a wheely position silly) so that the fluid in the res will fill the void in the radiator.
  5. Once full, put the bike back on it's kick stand and reinstall the resevoir cap.
  6. Restart the bike and let run a few minutes to make sure there is no more air in there. You should be seeing rad fluid moving around.
  7. If the fluid level goes down again....repeat steps 3 & 4. If not, continue to step 8.
  8. Refill resevoir making sure NOT TO go over the full mark (your crotch will thank you later...ask me how I know :eek: )!
  9. Enjoy. :cheers:
I did this (recommended by someone here) and never had a problem since.
 
I was not terribly happy with the way my bike ran on hot days so this is what I did.
  • I have a Motosportz skid plate, which allows me to use a standard dirt bike stand/lift, I raised the bike to it was level/on the stand.
  • I spent about 4 hours trying to figure out how to get the radiator cap off, there is a trick to it, and for me it took both hands.
  • When the bike was cold, I took off the radiator cap
  • The level was quite low, but slowly the over flow tank drained into it, especially when I took off the overflow tank cap
  • As I vaguely recall, I squeezed the hoses and bubbles came up
  • As I vaguely recall, I needed to add water because it was still low
  • Started the bike while it was on the stand, in neutral
  • Slowly the radiator level rose up, and then down once it became apparent the thermostat was opening - long before my fan came on
  • Eventually the fluid began to rise because that is what hot fluid in radiators do.
  • I turned off the bike, and let it cool.
  • I squeezed the hoses, no bubbles came out this time.
  • I filled up the radiator again, put the radiator cap on, filled the overflow tank to the proper level
  • And have yet to have another problem, and from what I can tell the bike runs much smoother (efi).
 
I have found a stronger/ higher psi radiator cap also works in Australian heat al beit on 450's and 310's. maybe worth a consideration along side the sage advise above.
 
kjackbrown said:
  1. Open radiator cap and start bike.
  2. Let idle so that the fan comes on and the thermostat opens.
  3. Let run another minute then shut off.
  4. Open resevoir cap AND STAND THE BIKE UPRIGHT (just off the kick stand...not a wheely position silly) so that the fluid in the res will fill the void in the radiator.
  5. Once full, put the bike back on it's kick stand and reinstall the resevoir cap.
  6. Restart the bike and let run a few minutes to make sure there is no more air in there. You should be seeing rad fluid moving around.
  7. If the fluid level goes down again....repeat steps 3 & 4. If not, continue to step 8.
  8. Refill resevoir making sure NOT TO go over the full mark (your crotch will thank you later...ask me how I know :eek: )!
  9. Enjoy. :cheers:
I did this (recommended by someone here) and never had a problem since.
Click to expand...

Thanks much. Will try this tonight after the bike cools.


Coffee said:
I was not terribly happy with the way my bike ran on hot days so this is what I did.
  • I have a Motosportz skid plate, which allows me to use a standard dirt bike stand/lift, I raised the bike to it was level/on the stand.
  • I spent about 4 hours trying to figure out how to get the radiator cap off, there is a trick to it, and for me it took both hands.
  • When the bike was cold, I took off the radiator cap
  • The level was quite low, but slowly the over flow tank drained into it, especially when I took off the overflow tank cap
  • As I vaguely recall, I squeezed the hoses and bubbles came up
  • As I vaguely recall, I needed to add water because it was still low
  • Started the bike while it was on the stand, in neutral
  • Slowly the radiator level rose up, and then down once it became apparent the thermostat was opening - long before my fan came on
  • Eventually the fluid began to rise because that is what hot fluid in radiators do.
  • I turned off the bike, and let it cool.
  • I squeezed the hoses, no bubbles came out this time.
  • I filled up the radiator again, put the radiator cap on, filled the overflow tank to the proper level
  • And have yet to have another problem, and from what I can tell the bike runs much smoother (efi).
Click to expand...


Thanks much. And what is the trick with the cap? I'm guessing finageling and muscle???
 
MadDogTR said:
...Thanks much. And what is the trick with the cap? I'm guessing finageling and muscle???
Click to expand...
  • Right index finger in the tab in the back, left index finger on the tab in the front.
  • Rotate 1/4 turn, then stop and remove hands
  • Right index finger on the same tab, which is now pointed towards the outside of the bike - but with finger laying down touching the radiator cap, which would cause your entire body to be closer to the ground
  • Left index finger on the same tab that you had it on, which is now pointed to the inside of the bike
  • At this point you should notice your arms (fingers) are basically 'crossed'
  • Rotate the last 1/4 turn.
At least that is how I did it.
 
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