70/30 Bikes

The Austral took its toll on our bikes. The F650 is a great bike on the highway and a good bike on the dirt. It is a 70/30 bike (70% highway/ 30% offroad). After repairing Megan's fork seal, my seal blew the next day. I made the homemade fork boots to try to keep dirt out of them, but my fork is now dripping oil everywhere. It splatters all over me and the bike when I ride. When I park the bike, I have to be careful not to let it drip all over the front tire. Our suspension just isn't built for 1000 km of dirty, bumpy, wet road.

And… I found another problem with the design of the bike. As we take this trip, we slowly learn things that we should be regularly checking in the F650: chain tension, which screws come loose, water levels, suspension. It turns out that there is a small gap between the frame of the bike and the radiator where rocks can get lodged. Over time these small rocks rub on the radiator and will eventually pop a hole in it. A hole in the radiator is bad.

Three days ago we noticed that Megan's bike was dripping blue fluid whenever we parked it. I felt the fluid and it felt oily to me. I made the assumption that her leaky fork seal was splashing back on the radiator (you could see wetness there). Because the radiator is hot, the oil becomes very liquid, flowing along the radiator, and when we put the bike on the kickstand, it dripped down onto the ground. The fluid was blue and having just dumped a bunch of blue oil into her forks this reinforced the idea that this is what we were seeing.

Two days ago, Megan's temperature light came on in the middle of the Patagonian desert. Wisely, she stopped the bike and turned off the engine. For whatever reason, her cooling system wasn't working and wasn't keeping the engine cool. If left unchecked, your engine can overheat and then there goes your bike. 

There are a few things that can cause the temp light to come on: Faulty water pump (a very had repair, but I do have the part), clogged radiator (hard to diagnose and fix), riding the bike too hard in hot weather (or just sitting in traffic), or not enough antifreeze/ water in the system.

[notice the small rock] So first things first, we checked the water and sure enough the radiator was pretty much empty. All of the sudden, the dripping fluid made sense. Now we had to find the leak. Was it a hole in the radiator, a loose hose, or something bigger. Megan spotted the problem when she saw the rocks wedged between the frame and the radiator. When we pulled them away, we noticed a particularly worn out spot. Our hope is that this is where the radiator is leaking. Smalls holes can be plugged (although sometimes not very effectively- the plugging compound has to expand under heat at exactly the same rate as the aluminum of the radiator or it will eventually come off). We dumped 750 ml of water into the radiator, put the bike back together and drove on. Bariloche was only 200km away and we figured we could keep refilling the radiator every 50km or so until we found a mechanic who could plug the hole. 

So that's what we did and every 50km we needed to dump in 100ml of water.

Hopefully the mechanic here can repair the hole. He's gonna try and he's also going to put new fork seals on our bikes. All for the princely sum of 1000 pesos ($250).

I hope it works. A new radiator is expensive.

So there it is, add to the list of things to check on the bike- inspect the spot where rocks can get lodged. Or better yet, buy or make a radiator guard and keep inspecting.

Update: We picked up the bikes from the mechanic and they seem to have plugged the hole. Hopefully it hold but I'm doubtful. Apparently the plugging compound needs to expand at the same rate as the aluminum of the radiator or it will eventually fail. We'll see.