[krishnaprasadgg]

So finally after almost 4 months/118 days the R1 is finally getting some TLC to get ready to be ridden again, yeah so after 4 months the weekend lockdown has lifted, well not really Saturdays are no more locked down, Sunday still is! Sigh!

Here's to hoping that the riding updates on this thread now will be more regular.

Anyways, while giving the bike a quick and lazy wash(I hate washing cars/bikes, I just hate it!) I noticed something that took me by surprise. The coolant level in the overflow reservoir is just rightttt on the LOW mark.

You can see the coolant level is right below the LOW marker


Current ODO

The last time the coolant was topped up was on 4th Oct 2020 when I was getting some work done on the bike, the ODO was at 25,637 KM at that time and now on 6th Aug 2021 at 27,394 KM it's about 10 months and has run only 1,757 KM.

Refilled to in between High and Low back in Oct 2020


ODO at the point of refill after 130kms or so

This is a very interesting thing because I had done the full coolant flush with Engine ice for the bike during the 1st week of Feb 2020 and it required a bit of top-up towards Oct the same year that's about 9 months in, but the difference being that the bike had run over 3500 KMS in the span of Feb - Oct. So while the time frame is about the same where I am observing the same drop but the KMS done is almost half.
But I am sure of 2 things,
1. There is no coolant leak whatsoever on the bike, I do check regularly for any oil leak and coolant leak every week without fail (kind of Ironic that I take the effort to do this but I can't get myself to clean the bike).
2. There is not oil+ coolant mixing because the oil color & level is on point with no milky/chocolaty or frothy effect to it. So I am attributing it to coolant vapourization loss due to the higher operating temperatures here.

Anyways, I will be keeping a keen eye on this and will be topping up the coolant soon, a full coolant system rebuild/swap is coming soon, just waiting on Yamaha to get me a new reservoir, which will be here anytime in another 4 years, I promise.

So just another observation, I have quoted many times here that the FE that I get for the bike on regular petrol on highways is about 12-14 KM/L and in mixed riding conditions can get to as low as 9 KM/L. But the last 2 full tanks have been with the 100 Octant petrol and here is the average FE as per the ECU. 6.8L/100 KMS, so if I did my math right that's about 14.7 KM/L. Not bad, do note that this is under pure Kerala city/highway riding conditions which are far more taxing than my usual long winding TN highway rides.

Well, apart from that let me leave you guys with a few pics I took of her during the TLC session. I know the photos are kind of repetitive, but hey, I can't help it, the bike just looks this good!

Cheers
Krishna

[no_fear]

Originally Posted by krishnaprasadgg

The coolant level in the overflow reservoir is just rightttt on the LOW mark.

You have a minor coolant leak. Check the clamps. It can also be one of the coolant hoses not fitted tightly. Its not uncommon for stationery R1s to lose coolant like this. The R1 clamps on right side of the bike just below the frame are often a bit weak. Plus that portion is hidden by the fairing. The coolant drips out slowly and evaporates and you do not get to see it.

[krishnaprasadgg]

Originally Posted by no_fear

You have a minor coolant leak. Check the clamps. It can also be one of the coolant hoses not fitted tightly. Its not uncommon for stationery R1s to lose coolant like this. The R1 clamps on right side of the bike just below the frame are often a bit weak. Plus that portion is hidden by the fairing. The coolant drips out slowly and evaporates and you do not get to see it.

Interesting. I was not aware of this tendency. As for the clamps, I did go and check. They are pretty snug in there with no play. But I'll be a bit more careful about this for the coming weeks. Maybe I will remove the lower fairing and look for deposits/residue on the fairing innards too.

Cheers
Krishna

[no_fear]

Originally Posted by krishnaprasadgg

I will remove the lower fairing and look for deposits/residue on the fairing innards too.

Found this on R1 forum. Another owner had similar leak even if bike was sitting. He drew a schematic of how he traced the leak. Red marks the spot, and white is where the coolant dripped down from.

[SnS_12]

Originally Posted by no_fear

Found this on R1 forum. Another owner had similar leak even if bike was sitting. He drew a schematic of how he traced the leak. Red marks the spot, and white is where the coolant dripped down from.
Attachment 2189191

The leaking coolant can take this path only if parked on the paddock but not on the side stand? Also the loose clamps can allow air into the system?

KP, you really need a new reservoir? Can you just not replace the old hoses with Samco kit and see if it makes a difference?

[krishnaprasadgg]

Originally Posted by no_fear

Found this on R1 forum. Another owner had similar leak even if bike was sitting. He drew a schematic of how he traced the leak. Red marks the spot, and white is where the coolant dripped down from.

Attachment 2189191

This is awesome. So far from what I have checked the engine block side and the pipes it's all clean and dry and no residue. Will check the belly pan innards just to be sure.

Originally Posted by SnS_12

The leaking coolant can take this path only if parked on the paddock but not on the side stand? Also the loose clamps can allow air into the system?

Air in the system is always going to be there, no matter how many times it's flushed properly some air is always there. In the R1 the number of heat cycles is just too high and iirc the system isn't pressurized, the filter cap is not threaded too. So lots of ways in which vapor loss is possible. But no worries will be taking a proper look into this, will keep it updated here too.

Originally Posted by SnS_12

KP, you really need a new reservoir? Can you just not replace the old hoses with Samco kit and see if it makes a difference?

In bikes with pretty high heat cycles, the reservoir becomes a point of failure, and that too with no signs warning an impending failure. So considering the bike is going to be 8 years old soon and how hot the bike runs and its ran 27k km too, I think it's a safer bet to just replace it.
Then over time coolant getting used up tends to form gooey deposits inside the reservoir and are pretty much stubborn if you try to get them out to avoid new coolant contamination.

But worry not I have this awesome guide on how to clean your reservoir, If I had a proper working shed setup I'd probably print this and frame it.





Cheers
Krishna

[SnS_12]

Originally Posted by krishnaprasadgg

In bikes with pretty high heat cycles, the reservoir becomes a point of failure, and that too with no signs warning an impending failure. So considering the bike is going to be 8 years old soon and how hot the bike runs and its ran 27k km too, I think it's a safer bet to just replace it.

Then over time coolant getting used up tends to form gooey deposits inside the reservoir and are pretty much stubborn if you try to get them out to avoid new coolant contamination.

Makes sense

Originally Posted by krishnaprasadgg

But worry not I have this awesome guide on how to clean your reservoir, If I had a proper working shed setup I'd probably print this and frame it.

I hope any tyro DIY reading this post reads the whole thing before actually trying it.

[Cyborg]

Originally Posted by krishnaprasadgg

But worry not I have this awesome guide on how to clean your reservoir, If I had a proper working shed setup I'd probably print this and frame it.

Krishna, the reservoir cleaning process is absolutely mind blowing imagine reading through the whole thing, seeing the pictures first because it’s in your face and then reading the last line

On a serious note, your story telling takes us through what you are doing, patience and perseverance with your R1 is off the charts.

Keep including us in your R1 ownership!

Ride safe.

Cheers

[krishnaprasadgg]

Originally Posted by SnS_12

I hope any tyro DIY reading this post reads the whole thing before actually trying it.

Originally Posted by Cyborg

Krishna, the reservoir cleaning process is absolutely mind blowing imagine reading through the whole thing, seeing the pictures first because it’s in your face and then reading the last line

This is a meme that I can relate to a lot imo. And I always send it whenever i have my friends reach out to ask the best way to clean the reservoir. Never fails to get a laugh in those cases.

Originally Posted by Cyborg

On a serious note, your story telling takes us through what you are doing, patience and perseverance with your R1 is off the charts.

Keep including us in your R1 ownership!

Ride safe.

Cheers

Thanks a lot for the kind words Cyborg!

I will always keep the thread updated, if it gives a realistic view of what owning a machine like this is, my job is done.
It's not always sunshine and roses when it comes to buying and living with these bikes, many people have the impression that its just buy the bike and ride happily into the sunrise/sunset happily ever after, there is a lot of headaches and dealing with parts, companies, people and is a roller coaster of a ride, to say the least.

Cheers
Krishna

[krishnaprasadgg]

So finally after 4 months took the R1 out for a ride, and what a roller coaster of a day it was.
One thing that I missed to point out in the previous post was that, even though the coolant level thing was there, I had a full bottle of engine ice with me which I had kept for situations like these, but the funny part is in preparation of the Samco hose swap about a month prior to this I had dropped it off at my friend's place in Cochin so that I wouldn't have to carry the bottle down when I do ride down for the hose swap. So yeah, I did not have any coolant at hand to top it up.
So the plan was to just have a leisure ride with Xasos636 around our neck of the woods, but then somehow the plan quickly turned into a ride to Cochin so that I can get the coolant topped up and he can swap his handlebar grips from the rough OEM Honda ones to the soft Yamaha grips. While it might not surprise us a lot that we ride long distances for the silliest of things, many don't understand this at all, mainly family members

Anyways, towards the evening of Friday it started raining pretty heavily and rained hard till early morning too, but we were determined no matter how hard it rains we shall push on with the ride, which in retrospect wasn't the smartest of idea for me as I had not ridden the R1 at all in 4 months, and taking it our on broken roads, bad weather could be bad as I haven't had seat time on the bike in a while, now again, this is something that is very important, on high strung bikes with little to no electronic aids, you need to be very careful while riding it after a considerable span or after riding bikes which are considerably less jumpy/erratic.

Met up with Xasos363 at our meeting point


Bikes are already filthy, but that's just the way I like it

Anyways, we started our ride on Saturday morning. Luckily for us by the time we started riding the rains had subsided and there was enough morning light to make the ride easier. And boy did I enjoy the ride, the weather was perfect, the bike was running without skipping a beat, no complaints from the engine on not being run for a long time or from the brakes(luckily no sag in brakes even after so long of a gap of inactivity). And the pops and bangs from the LV exhaust on deceleration were just icing on the cake. Another good thing was that we were lucky not to encounter any squids this time around too, a lucky break.

The ride to Cochin went on pretty uneventful, roads were pretty grimy from the rain overnight though, I made it a point to ride only in B mode as I did not want any nasty surprises with any sharper throttle response in sketchy road conditions as this.

The bike is absolutely filthy and covered in muck and grime, I don't know if it is just me but cars/bikes to me look so much sexier when it is all dirty and mucky after a good rain ride/drive.

Around 200kms of much and grime

Reached Cochin let the bike cool down for about 30 mins and filled up on coolant Xasos636 swapped out his handlebar grips and we were done, all in about 30mins or so. Yup, that's how little that needed to be done. Since we had lots of time to spare, we kind of hung around at a friend's place and chilled out mostly.

Coolant Level when we reached Cochin, there was a bit of overflow into the reservoir so the level is slightly higher


Topped up, took literally 1 min

That is when suddenly I remembered something that needed to be done on the bike that I have almost consistently forgotten in the past, the pesky Neutral Light Indicator not working when the engine gets warm. Since we had plenty of time at hand before we had to start back home side we decided to give it a diagnose and a possible juggad fix(Replacement part for this was ordered way back in Oct itself, still hasn't reached India yet).

For those who missed it, This was an issue I had posted about in Oct 2020(Page 10), the bike had this issue right from the time I bought the bike. So the issue is that the N light on the dash will not work once the bike has warmed up to operating temperature, which had no other issue other than the fact that during a ride I have no way of putting out the kickstand and let the bike run, the ECU thinks that the bike is in gear and instantly cuts off the bike. Not really a major issue unless you don't plan on continuing the ride immediately because that would mean I would have to crank the bike back up at a very high temperature and that sucks the juice out of the battery like there's no tomorrow, even though with the Li-ion battery it is not much of an issue for me, but this was an irritating problem nonetheless, I just can't have the bike running and on the side stand anytime I am in between a ride.

Many thanks to fellow member @TurboGTR who had faced the same issue on his R1 and had pointed out a fix that worked perfectly for him, he did that in Nov of 2020(Page 11) and it took me only almost 9 months to try it out, I just kept forgetting about it when I work on the bike and almost always curse myself when I face this irritating situation on the road.

Anyways, we did a few different approaches, we tried cleaning out the GPS(Gear Position Sensor) again just to see if it would work, but as the last time, it worked right after the cleaning and then fails again(Pics of that have already been posted in page 10 so not posting them again).

Then we tried placing a spring-loaded washer on both the bolts that mount the GPS so that it can give a bit more mounting force, but that too didn't work out the way we wanted to.

Finally, we tried out the method TurboGTR had done. Since I am pretty bad at fabricating stuff I left that to my friend(Sanju) and he fabricated a strip of a metal sheet from some leftover scrap we had lying around the house and gave it a try, while it did give positive results while the bike was idling but it still failed when we blipped the throttle, so a few trials and error tweaks and finally we had a proper working solution within about 20-30 mins of messing around with it. Did a few test runs around the block and it held beautifully, the N indicator on the dash now works at any operational temperature.

The fix TurboGTR had suggested


Tada..The Neutral Light is alive again.

Phew! What a relief it was, decided to test how good it held up during the return ride and am happy to say it worked without any hiccups at all. So I don't have to worry about this pesky issue anymore I hope.

Post this we just chilled out had a heavy lunch of Biriyani and lazed around a bit as we did not want to exit right at Noon and deal with the heat and traffic so decided to get an early afternoon return ride, but by the time we got out from our chilling, it started to rain. We waited for a bit to see if the rain would die down soon but there was no sign of it backing down and it was starting to get late and traffic would start slowing down in rains and people tend to drive more rashly too for some reason(totally counter-intuitive but that's what always happens) and this would mean out progress would be slow and we will lose daylight and riding in the rain and at night was the last thing we wanted so we set about.

As expected, we were greeted with the worst traffic block we could have hoped for. The trip from our friend's place to exit Cochin city limits onto the NH of about 20-25kms was pure hell! I was not able to shift above 2nd gear at all, with the temperature being consistent at around 105 degrees, not going to lie, when stranded in the rain the heat from the engine does feel good. Meanwhile, all this bumper-to-bumper traffic the clutch lever started feeling very hard over time and my left hand started to feel very weak and strained and riding was becoming tough but somehow made it through. That 20 - 25 km took a lot of time to cover as expected and finally we hit some traffic-free stretch and made it till Thrissur without losing daylight, we had 2 chai stops in between too as we were still kind of sleepy after our heavy lunch.

The ride post entering Thrissur was the same as exiting Cochin, with pretty bad traffic, and took a lot of time to enter and exit from city limits. We did our final fuel up at Thrissur and went in for the home run. But we lost daylight fast and the rain started getting heavier, hardly 20kms in it was pitch dark and the rain was so bad plus all the high beam drivers/riders made it impossible for us to see where we were going so we took a break again to let the rain slow down a bit and enjoyed another cup of tea.

Break from heavy rains and high beam drivers/riders while enjoying a cup of Tea

Luckily this time it did die down and traffic too died down by a huge margin making the rest of the journey pretty sedate and easy.

While the ride was epic my back does hurt now, not riding the bike for this long did finally take its toll, that along the return leg having to deal with lots of bumper-to-bumper traffic.

All in, rode around 300kms. A full day of riding in the dry, wet, good, and bad roads highway and clogged city traffic. A day well spent.

Trip meter at the end of the ride. ODO stands at 27,693 KMS

Cheers
Krishna

[doga]

Beautiful bike there cheta. I always thought roads are fantastic in Kerala and traffic was sparse. Looks like I was wrong, at least on the traffic part. The scenery I am sure is still very beautiful.
Good 'jugaad' on the GPS there, although time will tell how long that holds! Which cans are on your bike? They look great, but I think a brushed Ali/Titanium finish would compliment your bike better.
Keep riding and posting pictures as I am a regular reader of your threads.

[krishnaprasadgg]

Originally Posted by doga

Beautiful bike there cheta. I always thought roads are fantastic in Kerala and traffic was sparse. Looks like I was wrong, at least on the traffic part. The scenery I am sure is still very beautiful.
Good 'jugaad' on the GPS there, although time will tell how long that holds! Which cans are on your bike? They look great, but I think a brushed Ali/Titanium finish would compliment your bike better.
Keep riding and posting pictures as I am a regular reader of your threads.

Thanks, man!
There are some really beautiful roads down here, but the 2 lane highways are a far cry from the highways you see in TN or KA or TS, that sort of real estate is not there for Kerala. So we have to make do with narrower roads.
The scenery is on point though, I would agree
Yeah, it's not meant to be a permanent fix. The replacement sensor has been on order for close to 10 months now, no idea when it would reach.

Those are the LeoVince end cans. It is showing its age tbh. The carbon fiber has started showing a yellowish tint to it now.
Don't get me started on that, I have been searching for a good pair of Arrow/Akra pipes ever since I got the bike, so far no luck, if at all you come across 1 do let me know.

Sure, will keep the thread updated

Cheers
Krishna

[Rhik94]

I love your entire thread!! it is so much fun to read about all your escapades.
I had a CBR250R but had to sell it off when moving out of the country and now that I am back, I miss those impromptu rides.
Look forward to more ride details of the cross-plane legend.

[SoupRaw]

The 7th gen R1 is one of my favorites especially owing to those headlights. Great escapade, wishing you many more happy miles suhuruthe!

[TurboGTR]

Originally Posted by krishnaprasadgg

Many thanks to fellow member @TurboGTR who had faced the same issue on his R1 and had pointed out a fix that worked perfectly for him, he did that in Nov of 2020(Page 11) and it took me only almost 9 months to try it out, I just kept forgetting about it when I work on the bike and almost always curse myself when I face this irritating situation on the road.

Anyways, we did a few different approaches, we tried cleaning out the GPS(Gear Position Sensor) again just to see if it would work, but as the last time, it worked right after the cleaning and then fails again(Pics of that have already been posted in page 10 so not posting them again).

Then we tried placing a spring-loaded washer on both the bolts that mount the GPS so that it can give a bit more mounting force, but that too didn't work out the way we wanted to.

Finally, we tried out the method TurboGTR had done. Since I am pretty bad at fabricating stuff I left that to my friend(Sanju) and he fabricated a strip of a metal sheet from some leftover scrap we had lying around the house and gave it a try, while it did give positive results while the bike was idling but it still failed when we blipped the throttle, so a few trials and error tweaks and finally we had a proper working solution within about 20-30 mins of messing around with it. Did a few test runs around the block and it held beautifully, the N indicator on the dash now works at any operational temperature.

You're most welcome, Krishna! I'm glad to see this trick worked for you too.

By the way, congratulations on the RX-7V and the RCS 19 Corsa Corta! From experience with both, I can tell you that these are among the best upgrades you can get for your bike.

Sharing a photo clicked earlier this year by a friend of mine, Dattaraj Bodke, who is also a professional photographer.



Ride safe,
Aaron