So I'm in the middle of a spring clean on the blade and noticed the radiator looks scruffy with paint peeling off it. So I plan to drop it out and clean up ... and put new coolant in it. What are people using? I was going to pick up some Motul motocool but it seems I need silicate free?
Will be ringing them in morning ... my main worry is it needs to be silicate free. Apparently Halfords sell a silicate free OAT that will be suitable.
I used Silkolene Magcool in mine, I get it from local bike shop so depends who stocks what near you. Cheers Mike
OCD and others on this thread, what did you settle on using as coolant in the end? Having pulled the radiator of mine to tidy it and the exhaust headers up, I'm now very confused as to what to replace it with. The stuff that came out was green, but the Castrol Grand Prix motorbike coolant that I started putting back in was blue... I then started googling and got scared as I'm not sure the Castrol stuff is silicate free, so have now drained that back out again. Bought some of the Halfrauds OAT (pink) coolant which says on the bottle is Ethylene Glycol based and silicate free, but have now been reading people on tinterweb saying don't touch the stuff with a barge pole in a motorbike engine, and worse don't mix it with the green/blue stuff. Now thoroughly confused, not least because my search for distilled water to flush it all out with has been almost entirely unsuccessful. Lots of deionised water in petrol stations about, but cannot find distilled. And apparently I don't want to use deionised as it reacts with air and goes acidic...!
if you are using a high concentration of antifreeze tap water will be fine, unless you live in a particularly hard water area. Although I would not be overly worried about using deionised water either, as the antifreeze will counteract the the potential corrosive element of the the deionised water, that's why you should use antifreeze all the time and not just for winter. Distilled water is also deionised just a different method used and its not as pure
I do live in a hard water area so tap water is out. Deionised is not the same as distilled from what I have read - deionisation removes some of the minerals from the water but not all, whereas distillation does. Something to do with charged ions and reacting with carbon dioxide in the air turns the pH level of deionised water slightly acidic (pH 5.5 I think I read). Either which way, i'm only looking to flush the system with this - premixed coolant will be used to actually run the bike with, but that is an even bigger minefield. This rather shonky looking website pretty accurately sums up what I've found out so far... http://pages.infinit.net/mcrides/engine_tech/engine_coolant.htm For reference, the Honda service manual states that "Pro Honda HP Coolant or an equivalent high quality ethylene glycol antifreeze containing silicate free corrosion inhibitors" should be used.
I thought I read too much into these things... All you need to a pre-mixed OAT that is silicate free. I flushed mine out properly when the radiator was off with tap water. Once clear I then used distilled water (Halfords) for final flush before filling with pre-mix Halfords OAT pink antifreeze. Job done. Key thing is: silicate free and don't mix.
As Mr OCD said, if just flushing tap will be fine it wont leave anything behind as for Distilled and Deionsed your right they are not exactly the same but very similar, mainly due to the processes involved in purifying the possible risk from deionised water is that it is said to be very hungry for minerals including metals as they have all been removed, so as soon as its is exposed it will try and eat some. but the additives in the antifreeze will stop it causing the corrosion. If you buy premixed its will most likely be mixed with deionised water.
