After a year and 10,000 miles, my 650 finally overheated in a &^%@#&^%ing Seattle traffic jam yesterday. The radiator fan is utterly toast, the motor is nearly frozen and the blade assembly broke itself free of the rotor. I guess it says a lot about my riding style that it took this long to overheat (fanatically avoid traffic jams and never sit at long lights with the engine idling). The meter has never moved above 3 bars since I've owned the bike until yesterday. I'm sure the fan was toast when I bought the bike.
Has anyone purchased, installed, and ridden an aftermarket cooling fan that they recommend? There seem to be a lot of choices, even in the small size the 650 uses.
Thanks guys. Couldn't wait, bought an aftermarket fan from Summit Racing (Derale 16105). I'm also adding a relay to help the thermo-switch last forever. I'll report on my installation when I'm finished.
Funny thing is that there is already a relay in the circuit, energized by the ignition, so the fan can't run unless the ignition is on.
You could just wire the thermo switch in series with the control signal from the ignition,if so inclined, but my guess is that the thermo switch is better suited to switch the load on and off a lot of times than a relay would be.
Erik, I had a water-cooled Porsche years ago which destroyed (expensive Bosch) thermo-switches at an alarming rate until I added a relay to take the fan current away from the thermo-switch. Then it never ate another one.
For $4 it's a cheap and easy mod to do to the 650. Hella says 10,000,000 cycle-life on the relay. The thermo-switch energizes the relay which energizes the cooling fan. I'm also going to put a relay in the ignition switch circuit, since they seem to fry themselves also.
Hey Mike, I'm still a few miles south of you. I have a fan from my 03 if you need a quick fix. I will be going to Kirkland thru B-town in the AM and back again at about 4 PM. And I have Sunday and Mondays off too.
Thanks much Dave, if this aftermarket fan doesn't fit then I'll talk to you. The GF gave me a week-long permit to ride her 400 when she isn't on it so I'm not confined to the despicable cage.
The fan is a Derale 16105 which was about $77 from Summit Racing. It's rated at 315cfm and really surprised me when I bench tested it, papers blew all over my desk. The fan motor itself is a Spal (made in Italy), Derale stuck a big Made in USA sticker on the fan shroud, which sadly unstuck itself after my test drive. Anyway, I'm happy, no made-in-communist-china junk.
I added an SPST relay so that the thermoswitch doesn't carry the full fan current. It was $4 from Summit, now I won't worry about the inductive load of that fan motor possibly toasting the thermoswitch. Cheap insurance. The new fan is a little deeper than the OEM so I was concerned about clearance. After reassembling, I could see about 3/4" between the fan and the frame so it's good.
I did a short test drive and then put the bike on the center stand and played with the throttle and waited for the fan to kick on. When it did, the thing pulls so much air that it only ran for about 6 seconds. Outside air temperature was 80F.
So, no more overheating Lardy and no more riding around in the cage, man I really got sick of that cage stuff over the past week.
Is it held on to the radiator by wire zip-ties through the radiator core?
I didn't look closer at the relay, but there are relays with a built-in diode to protect the contact set against the spike that comes when the current supply is cut.
Yes, they supplied nice zip-tie-like plastic rods that you carefully insert through the radiator fins, with a soft rubber pad and anchor on the front side (see photo).
Yes this Hella relay has an internal resistor "supressor" in parallel with its coil, I didn't really want that but what I did want was the nice mounting tab. Summit was out of stock on the non-suppressor relay with the tab so I went with this one.
Yeah I put the radiator shroud back on after first reassembling (and taking photos) to ensure that I had proper clearance between the frame and the new fan etc.
Unfortunately I may have forgotten to torque down my 2 new stainless bolts/nuts that attach the radiator guard (the original bolts were frozen to the speed nuts). So I'll crawl back under the forks tomorrow and torque them down. They're still on the radiator even after a lovely 30-mile twisty dusk ride through lovely May Valley and the Issaquah Alps.
for somebody's info. I had same problem, fan rubbing housing. I shimmed mine with washers some thousands of miles ago. just before trip out west, the problem returned. took it to shop with 60k miles. they replaced for $500+.
Here you go Erik. Can't get the camera in there to show the fan without lying on the ground to unbolt the radiator to swing it out. I won't be doing any ground-lying for a few more weeks I think.
I should add that in yet another &^%@#&^%ing Seattle traffic jam during warm weather, the new fan was running but the temperature gauge went to 4 bars briefly. I'd look at adding 2 aftermarket fans to cover more of the radiator if I lived in Phoenix AZ where you could be in in a &^%@#&^%ing traffic jam when the outside air temperature is 110F. Clearance might be an issue for the upper fan, things are tighter up there I think.
Thanks, miken6mz for this excellent post. I was wondering how the fan is performing or if you had done anything else regarding sometimes/albeit brief overheating episodes in the ^$%^&Seattle traffic?
My buddies 650 has a bad fan so we're going pull it out and see why? Looking at a aftermarket fan if we can't get his going. This post helps a lot, thanks!
You are likely to spend more than either a used or maybe a new Burgman fan that would not require rigging and will keep bike from overheating. Every time I try and go cheap, I lose.
OK let me repeat, I wasn't "going cheap." Quite the contrary, I was "going quality." Adding the relay was "going reliability." My labor, over and above what it would have been to replace the OEM fan with another OEM, was maybe 30 minutes tops.
After I examined the POS that Denso built for the cooling fan, I wouldn't have replaced it with the original even if someone had given me a new one for free. Denso components are usually top-quality but this fan is garbage.
Thanks Miken6mz. If we need a new fan we'll go with the Derale.
It's gonna a few days b4 we get it apart.
Sirkitrider
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