Maintenance & Technical > KX500 Original

Extra cooling

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cbmoor:
Has anyone fitted a cooling fan to a kx5. The reason I am asking is I overheated the bike and holed a piston at my last meeting. It was a muddy meeting and I put covers to protect the rads from getting blocked and to hopefully stop the rads getting blocked. but they got blocked up instead of the rads. So that did not work out to well but I was thinking if a electric fan would help on either 1 or both rads and has anyone tried it.

 I know you do not need a fan in normal racing conditions but we are having a winter series and it will mainly be in grass or stubble field in wet conditions and the mud stick like s*** in those conditions. and the bike usually ways twice as much at the end of each race. On my crf I usually just use a a set of the wife tights covering the rad louvers and the mud just not stick to that but it did not work out on the kx. As there is a space between the radiator louvers and the radiators I was thinking of trying to fit a fan behind the rads and it would still be able to draw air through the rads and the louvers to help keep the bike cooler even when I have covers on to keep the mud out in really muddy conditions. So has any tried this and what fan did you use or got any ideas.

kxpegger:
Goggle "anti-stick sprays" or "anti-stick coatings". There's a bunch of different types thay may help reduce the amount of mud sticking to your louvers and rads. Never tried any myself as I live in Southern Nevada... we don't have any mud here! :-D

Hillclimb#42:
They have an additive called "engine ice" thats supposed to reduce engine operating temps, but I would think you may have had another issue. The electric fan idea seems like a problem also in the muddy/wet conditions. It seems like if you are riding along that the engine should not over heat at all. Maybe at a long sitting idle, but maybe I have just been lucky. Kaw Rider has done some homework on this topic, however, and may be the guy to ask about reducing temps.

cbmoor:
Thanks for the response so far, The bike is used in mx races and the roost of other bikes is causing the problem thats why I put womens tights over the louvers to stop mud from sticking but sometimes its wet mud and in clumps so it blocks the covers as well. and then the air not getting through to the rads.

I already use engine ice and have bigger capacity radiators fitted and this did not help at the last meeting. the bike had less than 10hrs on a full rebuild and was running great. Done a sand meeting and a 3hr beach race and lots of practise with out a problem. But heat from racing short tracks in muddy conditions where the bike is not getting air through the radiators is the problem. This is why I was thinking about fitting a fan or 2 fans behind the rads to help pull air through the rads. and was wondering if anyone had done this. High revs, short straights, muddy conditions = boil over and if not seen. Nice hole in the exhaust side of a weisco piston and nasty scores in the barrell

kaw rider:
cb
there some ways you can do this. ducting to the face of radiator that the inlet is in different angle, so the angle of the duct would gather all the mud then the air would still go thru radiator. to do fans with big radiator guards. Electric fans stall out at about 160mph.

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