This is a great thread for a newby to the liquid cooled bikes.
Last summer I purchased a used 95 ST1100 with 131,000 miles. It is my first liquid cooled bike. It had some major electrical, carb problems and the water fitting on the right head was corroded to the point it was falling apart. The PO told me that he replaced the left one 3 years ago. While I was replacing it I flushed the old dirty water, and it was just water, out of it. The PO told me that he never used anti freeze, just plain water.
I finally have the thing pretty well sorted and it runs great, EXCEPT, for trying to overheat. When running on the open road the gage reads about 1/4 of the way up.
when running in city traffic and even slow stop and go on the freeway it will come up to the point where the fan comes on and if the speeds don't pick up it will keep climbing, even with the fan on. Today it got up to the bottom of the top white mark and I pulled off the road and let it cool down.
I have a few concerns.
While t-shooting the electrical I temp installed a voltmeter. When the fan comes on, at idle, the volts will drop from about 14 to about 11.5. This seems like a really heavy draw for the fan. I have a honda shop manual for it, BUT, nowhere does it give any specs on the fan motor and the draw.
I am wondering if the tubes in the radiator could be partially plugged and/or the passages in the block/heads, because of the extended use of straight water. If so, can I use a commercial coolant flush to clean it? Or is the radiator trash?
I am also considering that the water pump might be in bad shape because of the lack of good coolant. I have seen aluminum waterpumps with the housing pretty well ate away from lack of coolant, and they would not pump enough water to keep the engine cool.
Any advice on this is very much appreciated.
BTW, it doesn't leak any coolant...