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How much cooling system corrosion is too much?

Joined
Jul 19, 2019
Messages
71
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39
Location
Huntsville, Texas
First Name
Stephen
Long story short, I bought an FZ1 off of here. It was a 2007 with 4500 miles and the seller notified me that it sat for a looong time.

The bike runs pretty good after sorting a few throttle body issues but one thing that has me concerned is the cooling system. I will probably not buy another bike that has sat because of my experience with this one. :-?

I've flushed the coolant probably 4 or 5 times now and it keeps turning black. Granted, it takes longer and longer for it to turn black again after every flush but it seems to eventually get there. This last flush I went for probably 300 miles and it was still very green. I'm pretty certain it is not oil getting into the coolant and instead is corrosion inside the cooling system slowly getting flushed out. I've replaced all the cooling hoses and couldn't help but notice some pitting on the inside of the of hard metal pipes that go into the engine block/water pump/etc. I have not yet seen what the passage ways inside the actual engine look like and have not yet pulled the water pump but plan to. The pitting is not overly bad I don't think, just enough to notice that the inside of the pipes is rough to the touch--there were not gigantic flakes of metal coming off or anything like that.

Other than this specific issue, I had plans to hold onto the bike for a long time. Is sudden and catastrophic cooling failure something I should be concerned about? I've run into vehicles with heavy amounts of cooling system corrosion and they all seemed to run and perform just fine for a good long while as long as you did your part to keep the corrosion from getting worse....but I don't know if the same can be said for motorcycles. What do you think?
 
You might check but I'm guessing that the green coolany is not the right coolant for the bike. It may be reacting with the aluminum and turning black. I know any aluminum engine I've had whether car or bike needed G40 coolant. It's the pink stuff.
 
Yamaha has been known to use some fittings on their cooling systems that corroded from the inside. Here’s an example of one that I just took off my YZ.
 

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I’ve never used anything but ethylene glycol coolant in any of my bikes , I do run industrial coolant additive and have been known to run coolant 10 years before a flush . The youngest bike I own is 9 years old now . No issues with any of them especially my Cagivas , they have maintaince free cooling systems .
 
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