• 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 The previous version was outdated and no longer supported.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

RidingDonkeys said:
Does that mean you dug in and found it?
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No, I have not looked on the Terra, I searched out for a Sertao and found some pics. My guess is that this does reside in the radiator. I also noticed some inline thermostats listed for other 650's, that they put in the hose.

So I started thinking. Some folks have spent a couple hundred on crash bars, some are experiencing overheat issues, so I am going to look into a possible radiator swap out, with mods to beefy up the frame to act more like a crash bar.

There has to be some generic radiators with better capacity that would fit these bikes. I can't imagine what a replacement costs, and if the thermostat is in the rad, and Husky is not making the parts any longer, might be a good time to develop a solid fix now. The thermostat is guaranteed to fail eventually.

Just thinking is all, still need to setup my shop and that will still take me another month or so.
 
RidingDonkeys said:
Fair enough. I'm used to air cooled motorcycle engines, and seeing running temps fluctuate.

It is possible that I still have some air in the system. Let me shake this thing out for a few more days and I'll report back.
Click to expand...

I figured it was time for a radiator cap report. I am happy to say that things are working a bit better on my bike with the new cap. The bike is consistently running at 9 bars on the temp gauge. Even riding in 10 degree weather this past week, 9 was the magic number. Now, it sometimes gets hotter when I stop and idle for long periods in heavy traffic, but the cooling system rapidly brings it down to the 9 bar level. We'll see how this shakes out when Summer gets here.
 
Neil San Diego said:
I haven't seen any discussion of the overheating problems lately. Has this problem been solved for most folks??

I finally picked up my Terra two weeks ago, but I can't seem to get an hour down the road before having the damn thing overheat. It's already been back to the dealer once, and will be going back in the next day or two. They said they got several bubbles out of the radiator the last time I took it in. That allowed it to go 60 miles instead of 5 miles before overheating. At this point, I have NO faith that the bike can even get me to the store across the street, let alone to a camping trip 200 miles away. Really a pity, because this would be a fantastic bike, save for this one ridiculous problem.

I've read through this whole thread. Aside from "burping" the radiator, and possibly switching out the radiator cap, has anyone found any silver bullet that can make this thing freakin' work??
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To follow up on my overheating Terra...

Just got it back from the dealer this morning and it's running great. Just did a 150 loop around San Diego - combination of mountains and freeways. The temperature is staying down in the middle range now matter what I throw at it.

The fix was a new head gasket. I'm told that the original gasket delaminated and was allowing exhaust gases to cross over to the water channel. The mechanic showed me the original delaminated gasket. I guess that the cooling system kept filing up with exhaust gases and keeping the system from cooling the engine. Whatever happened, the bike is now running cool and appears to be fine.
 
Neil San Diego said:
I guess that the cooling system kept filing up with exhaust gases and keeping the system from cooling the engine.
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Would have been combustion gas = higher pressure & temp. Did they mention why this occurred? Some probable causes -
*low coolant level or air pocket causing a hotspot causing the gasket to deteriorate
*installation fault during engine assembly or faulty gasket
*poor sealing surface between the head & barrell; bad or uneven surface finish. I'm sure the mechanic would have run a straight edge over the head & barrell to eliminate this scenario.
Glad to hear all is well.
 
I drove to chill soon I totally replaced the coolant. I'm curious to see if the bike will warm less now that I have done very well bleed!
 
Questions for you knowledgeable folks:
First some background info. A few rides ago my Husky overheated; later one of my riding buddies said he saw a large wet patch on the ground where we had stopped. After the bike cooled down I took the radiator cap off and purged a few bubbles out by squeezing the hoses and rode home without incident. Have ridden it hard a couple more times without overheating or wetting itself. However, yesterday after a ride in the heat, there was water/coolant spitting out from the little hole in the coolant reservoir cap when I stopped, enough to form a puddle under the bike. It didn't last long and the fluid level in the reservoir was at the top. When I got home, I was covered in coolant that had again squirted out of the reservoir cap. The temperature gauge was normal

So the questions are: is this normal? Is it a symptom of too much coolant in the system? Has anyone else experienced this?
 
mongrel said:
So the questions are: is this normal? Is it a symptom of too much coolant in the system?
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I'll answer your first question with a question ;). Is the radiator full when the bike is cold? If it is an inch or more below the filler neck, replace your cap as they have an issue of not recovering coolant when the system cools down.
Second question; it appears your recovery tank was overfull if the gauge or warning light did not indicate an overheat condition. Also squeeze your hoses when hot to ensure your cap is holding pressure and not venting excess coolant.
It sounds like you have purged your system - an annoying task to perform on a new bike when it should have been done during the predelivery inspection as it is a well documented/discussed issue.
 
AUS_TR650 said:
I'll answer your first question with a question ;). Is the radiator full when the bike is cold? If it is an inch or more below the filler neck, replace your cap as they have an issue of not recovering coolant when the system cools down.
Second question; it appears your recovery tank was overfull if the gauge or warning light did not indicate an overheat condition. Also squeeze your hoses when hot to ensure your cap is holding pressure and not venting excess coolant.
It sounds like you have purged your system - an annoying task to perform on a new bike when it should have been done during the predelivery inspection as it is a well documented/discussed issue.
Click to expand...

Radiator fluid level was fine but bizarrely, coolant squirted out of the radiator cap when I loosened it to check the level. Bike was stone cold, so radiator holding pressure when cold??? Overflow coolant level may be too high - when I had the overheating episode a few weeks ago I thought there was no water in the system as the radiator hoses were soft and cold, when the engine was hot. I added about 300ml of water; that might explain the water squirting out of the overflow cap.

I will replace the radiator cap as well, hopefully that will cure the gremlins in the cooling system
 
Bad news from the dealer. They said the cooling fan is faulty (won't come on) & will be replaced under warranty BUT it will be 4 to 8 weeks before the part comes in! WTF?! Not happy, I had an interstate high country trip planned for 4 weeks time
 
mongrel said:
They said the cooling fan is faulty (won't come on)...
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Okay so when they tried to hard-wire the fan with 12VDC from the battery it didn't work or the ECU isn't activating the fan or its relay? Did the fan come on when you were riding when it o/heated?
 
AUS_TR650 said:
Okay so when they tried to hard-wire the fan with 12VDC from the battery it didn't work or the ECU isn't activating the fan or its relay? Did the fan come on when you were riding when it o/heated?
Click to expand...
I thought the fan had come on while I was riding; I have felt that blast of hot air on my left leg a few times. I did ring the service guys and they had already connected the fan to a 12v source and said it didn't work.

Baddrapp said:
There is a fan for sale on fleabay.
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Yeah I saw that but its being replaced under warranty.
 
mongrel said:
I thought the fan had come on while I was riding; I have felt that blast of hot air on my left leg a few times. I did ring the service guys and they had already connected the fan to a 12v source and said it didn't work.
Click to expand...


If you just park your bike and idle it for 5 mins the fan should come on when the temp gauge passes the halfway mark. Shouldn't be too hard to work out if it is in fact working or not.
 
While my bike isn't overheating (yet) I did just check my overflow bottle and it's empty. Is it ok just fill it with water or do I need to mix it 50/50 or 60/40 with coolant? Regarding the water, is it best to used purified?
 
I've noticed a lot of over heating issues with the TR650. How many of you guys have tried running my waterless XF coolant and has it solved your over heating issues?
 
turtlemoye said:
While my bike isn't overheating (yet) I did just check my overflow bottle and it's empty. Is it ok just fill it with water or do I need to mix it 50/50 or 60/40 with coolant? Regarding the water, is it best to used purified?
Click to expand...
Yes 50/50 is best--any ethylene glycol will do. Yes DISTILLED water is best.

EDIT: After reading about the XF coolant I decided to give it a go. Looks like a great product. Well played Mr. Tinken.... Well played :)
 
Every time I come to this thread, I find something else I need to buy. If MrsDonkeys had any clue how much money I spent farkling this bike, she'd kill me. She's the queen of buying a bike and resisting the urge to farkle. I.....well....let's just say that I have no ability to resist the farkles.
 
Sorry, just trying to be helpful. :o
I skimmed through the thread and I saw high pressure caps and flushing coolant, etc. XF is low pressure, so even a beer can cap will work. And Ty uses zip-ties on his radiator hoses. There is no corrosion, so you never change it for the life of the bike.
 
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