It's funny how things change in life... priorities change... interests change...
I still enjoy riding my motorcycles as much as I always have, but seem to have less time and desire to say much about it. I hope to ride out to South Dakota with my buddy John again this fall. We were out there last year to watch the SuperMoto races in down town Sturgis.
As you may remember, that was when the radiator on the Zx-14 sprung a leak. I ended up leaving it in S.D. and going back for it a couple of weeks later. It has since been repaired, test ridden, and is all set to go on another adventure..
John came over to help and we began to tear it apart. The radiator removal was pretty straight forward. It did involve the removal of a lot of plastic, but the actual radiator removal was easy. 3 bolts and 4 hoses. It took longer to remove the body panels than it did the radiator.
I weighed my options before deciding how to go about the repair... A NEW radiator was ridiculously expensive.. $966. I shopped Ebay for a used one. Most of them look like they came off of crashed bikes and most had a ton of bent fins and looked pretty crappy! The prices were all over the place. A nice one was $250 and I think the cheapest was around $65, but that one looked like hell. It was full of sand and mud, had bent fins and no guarantee that it didn't leak... I even stopped at a couple of local motor sports places. I know they're used to dealing with ATVs and UTVs but I figured that they're water cooled and they must occasionally have to repair a radiator. No luck! No one I talked to could give a solid recommendation for anyone local to weld up the thin aluminum radiator.
I found a place down in the twin cities area, Tom's Radiator Repair on Main street in Anoka, MN. I called Tom and he assured me that the repair would be easy enough for him to do and that he had repaired countless aluminum radiators. He quoted me $75 for the repair, paint, and pressure testing.
Nancy was going down to the cities so she dropped it off one day and picked it up the next!!
It turns out that the Cox Radiator Guard I had installed a few weeks after buying the cycle, had rubbed on the bottom corner and eventually, over the course of 55,000 miles, wore a pin hole in one tube. The radiator guard used several small foam sticky blocks to isolate it from the radiator. Over time, some of the blocks collapsed and then bad things started to happen I can't really fault the maker of the guard. Ultimately it's my responsibility to make sure everything is OK...
Anyways.. We're up and running! waiting for some place fun to ride to.... Hey John, how about a long day trip down to the alphabet roads???
Radiator just out of the bike...
Good foam block....
Bad foam block... One of several. There were even a few blocks that had fallen off. The radiator went back on the bike without the guard on it.
I wasn't thinking about taking pictures when I had the bike all apart! After I got the radiator back, John came over and we got it back in place with no problems.
Glad you are race ready once again and without having to pay for a new radiator too.
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