Living with a Yamaha R1 superbike; Ownership & maintenance updates

What's life without some extra spice to keep things interesting?

BHPian krishnaprasadgg recently shared this with other enthusiasts.

Since a few weeks of update is pending as quite a bit has happened during this time, let me pick it up from where we left off.

Never a pretty sight to see, Return of the coolant problems?

Post the ride I had to go back to my hometown for almost 2 months, during which bhpian @wolfy was babysitting the R1. He would take care of weekly running the bike for a bit so that it wasn't sitting idle for 2 months, a few weeks went by and all was going well. But then one fine weekend when Wolfy took the R1 its weekly maintenance spin and came back to his place and switches off and parked the bike and suddenly the R1 started pissing coolant all over the floor through the overflow hose, he immediately calls me to inform me about this and I immediately get flashbacks to a few months back when I had the same issue happen which took the bike out of commission for a few weeks.

That time around it was the radiator cap which was the issue and I was thinking to myself there is no way the radiator cap has gone bad again. So we did the first round of checks, we removed the reservoir cover and checked if the top rubber sealing cap was blown out of the seal and we found that it had not. So it was a clean overflow as opposed to what had happened last time where the pressure in the cooling system was so high that it used to blow the top cap of the reservoir cover and flow directly from the top of the expansion tank.

We filled in a bit of engine ice back into the coolant reservoir and put the cover back on just to see if the coolant would overflow again, @Wolfy took the bike out for a few spins again over the next two days, but we did not face anymore overflow issues this time. Did that mean this was just a one-time incident where when the bike was turned off the temperature spiked and that led the coolant to boil over, well while I did think of that possibility, it didn't sound right, because this has never happened before apart from when the radiator cap had gone bad. So after a few days, we tried it again but this time without fitting the coolant expansion tank cover on, and voila there you have it, even at about 80-90 degree temperature the coolant was boiling over in the expansion tank.

Almost the exact same issue as last time but only that this time around the pressure was never so high that the top cap of the tank was being blown up, instead the rising level of coolant was just overflowing through the overflow line, as designed.

So then the bike was again filled up with a little bit more engine ice and was ridden to Highlander for Karthick to run a diagnostic check as to what might be the issue.

The R1 being nursed back to health at Highlander

So once there Karthick checked the radiator cap again and it was found to be in perfect working order then he tried recreating the issue and it was easy enough to recreate, so then we thought maybe it was a big air bubble in the system, but then again post the last proper bleeding of the coolant the bike ran for 3k km without any issues and that included a multi-day trip in peak summers and the bike never dripped coolant at all, how can suddenly a big air bubble form in the system, but regardless, since we had lost a lot of coolants anyways, Karthick suggested it was a better idea to refill the radiator with coolant and the system was burped properly again and to try and recreate the issue again to just eliminate the possibility, this was done and as expected it happened again, which meant this was not air in the system issue.

So our next suspects were the coolant temp sensor and the thermostat. During this whole fiasco, the bike never ran hot, the fans kicked in at the right temperature, and the bike was being cooled down properly, operating temps never exceeded 110-112 degrees, and when it did the second fan kicked in and the temp reduced almost instantly back to 90-98 range which has always been the case throughout the years and even now the bike behaved the same, now not taking into consideration what the coolant gauge showed the feel of the heat that you get while on the bike in traffic was also exactly the same, very much manageable and the heat was never overwhelming, so taking into consideration both these points we decided to look into the thermostat as the possible culprit.

So we set about with another test to check out the thermostat issue, the theory was that the thermostat is either stuck closed or is able to open up only partially. So the shop manual was consulted and as per the manual the thermostat should start to open up when the coolant temp hits 71 degrees and should fully open at 85 degrees, and the valve lift should be at 8mm when fully open.

Shop manual to the rescue yet again!

Now things were starting to fall in place the coolant boiling issue was being noticed above 80 degrees, so to test this what we did is we replaced the Radiator cap from the OEM specified 1.1 bar to 1.4 bar with a similar size radiator cap to attain a perfect seating and as expected the whole issue just went away.

So what does this tell us or allow us to assume with reasonable credibility is that it is indeed a thermostat issue, since both the radiator caps were in working condition, and further eliminates the chance of the thermostat being stuck fully close because in that case the pressure should increase much faster and surpass 1.4 bar and the coolant boiling and top cap of the expansion tank blowing should have happened because the pressure in the system would exceed the pressure for which the radiator cap was rated for.

This allows us to assume that the thermostat is opening only to a limited capacity which is causing the pressure in the system to increase as free flow of coolant is not being achieved into the radiator but as the radiator fans are running and functioning properly it is able to cool the coolant enough to not raise the pressure in the system enough to cause the coolant to boil over expand and cause a rise in the expansion tank which would lead to overflow of the coolant.

So why do I say all this with an asterisk of "assumption", well, it would be as easy as removing the thermostat dunking it in a tumbler of water with a thermometer, and heating the water to observe the thermostat valve opening when it hits 71 and observe if it is attaining an 8mm valve lift or at 85 degrees, well the issue is, doing this would mean another waste of 2L or more of engine ice and engine ice doesn't come cheap and I did not want to do this without having a brand new replacement thermostat with me in hand. So an order for the thermostat was placed and after a bit of discussion with Karthick and multiple experienced mechs, it was decided that since the bike wasn't overheating(not overflowing) at any point before or after the 1.1 to 1.4 bar cap it was safe enough to run the 1.4 bar cap till the new thermostat was to reach us.

While I fully agree this is a band-aid fix and not a proper fix and while I am not comfortable running a higher spec(failure point) radiator cap than what OEM suggests, I am not willing to put the bike out of commission till I have the replacement parts and moreover, this is where the samco hoses come to the rescue, these pipes are rated for much much higher pressure that was it is being subjected to and I am pretty sure if I had not changed to the Samco hoses I would have had busted/exploded radiator hoses as opposed to simple and pretty harmless coolant overflow scenarios.

By this time, I had reached back to Bangalore and set about doing some thorough stress tests for the temp fix that we had done to gain confidence that the bike would run properly, for which I rode the bike purposefully () through peak hour bangalore traffic both in the morning and afternoon heat and for good measure some weekend ride 200kms roundtrips and luckily not once did the coolant boil over(tests were done without fixing the expansion tank cover so that boiling of coolant could be easily noticed) or overflow.

Here she is at her usual watering holes, gulping down the good stuff, XP100

During all this, the bike rolled over to 43,000 km on the odo too.

Yay! 43k

Weird how in the recent posts the ODO milestones have the lesser weightage, . I sincerely hope this trend doesn't continue.

Made the most out of the city torture test by catching up with a few friends after months of being away.

Meeting a friend who owns this gorgeous Panigale V4S with the speciale sticker kit

Some good coffee always makes catching up with friends much more fun

For the highway ride, I tagged along with bhpian @neil.jericho, he was out and about to finish the running-in of his brand-new Duke 390 and I tagged along.

A quick 200kms ride with @neil.jericho

The ride was smooth and even free for both of us, which included early morning highway runs heavy south Indian breakfast polling, and a relaxing lazy ride back that we ended up taking only 2 pics, and that too just before saying our goodbyes for the day.

So post the stress test which altogether was about 300ish km I went back to Karthick to evaluate how the test rides went, I noticed that the black plastic trim piece that sits just below the tank on the left side of the tank had its front clip popped out, and I just went to pop it in like I had done a few times before over the years and but instead of the reassuring click that I usually hear the part just altogether came off the bike and was in my hands.

Well, that was not expected

Dumbfounded of what just happened I take a closer look and the inevitable has happened, the mounting hole for the trim piece had broken clean off.

This was not a surprise, the eagle-eyed readers would have noticed in the pics dating years back the mounting hole for the trims(both left and right) had a small crack in them from the time I got the bike and the screw that held it in place also had stripped heads(also something I inherited).

Have a look, this is the still unbroken right side panel, but the cracks and stripped screw is clearly visible

But since it was just a trim piece I did not want to do anything about it and was careful around it whenever the panels were removed for general services and took good care to handle the stripped screws too as getting the replacement parts for the same was a monumental failure through Yamaha India and getting it directly imported was just too expensive with each side costing around $110 or so and with shipping and customs it made no sense.

How it looked without the side panel on

Anyway, long story short, with enough amount of time and heat cycles and pressing on the panel with your knees the left side panel gave out. This happened right in front of Karthick while I was talking to him, so he promptly went in and brought the irrefutable hero tools of all jugaad fixes superglue and double-sided gorilla tape and got to work.

When the superglue and double-sided tape come out you know it is serious

The broken piece was put together with superglue and the gorilla tape was applied to hold it in place, again as a temporary measure, wow, this post is filled with jugaads, but circumstances are such, can't do anything about it.

Respite for now!

So as soon as I got back home I placed an order for the side panels again, but this time through a different source, hopefully, I'll have better luck this time.

Anyway, now that that is also taken care of I was a bit relieved but I wanted to do one more round of testing just for my own sake, but I also had to go back to my hometown for a short while which I could not avoid thankfully this time Xaos636 was free and volunteered to do the tests while I was out of town. Things should be pretty smooth right? Well, that's where I was wrong, now we have a new problem pop up and this time to add some spice to the mix, the new problem is of the electrical nature.

Yay! Good fun right? What's life without some extra spice to keep things interesting?

Will post about this in detail in the next post. Until then,

Cheers
Krishna

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