ATC_Outlaws
09-25-2012, 07:16 PM
Hi all,
I recently picked up a tri-z (I believe it is an 86 but I'm not 100% sure), and when I picked it up it was sporadically dripping coolant out of the overflow after the bike got hot. The guy I bought it from thought it might have been a bad radiator and he threw in an extra one for me, but it didn't seem like a rad issue because after riding it for a while we found coolant in the oil. I figured that since the problem could have been any number of issues, giving it a decent ride would exasperate the problem and make diagnosis easier.
Either way, before ripping apart radiators and after reading some forum posts on here, I decided that I might as well order a versah stock gasket kit and put a new head gasket in because of the coolant in the oil. We took the head apart and only replaced the head gasket, however we noticed after taking off the head that the bike had already been bored out and had an wiseco pison installed. I tore the bike down, and my buddy took care of putting a new head gasket in for me while I was at work. He didn't have a torque wrench handy so he just torqued it down to what he figured 18/19 foot lbs of torque would be and I trust him as he's been working on cars / atvs / motorcycles etc for quite some time now. Obviously this could have been an issue but we let the bike sit for about a month after the repair job was done.
After taking care of the head gasket the bike started to have fuel issues, we think something was clogged in one of the lines or fuel pump. We took the fuel pump apart and cleaned out all the lines and afterwards the bike started up again without issue. I took the bike down the street, no more than 1/2 a mile and this time we saw quite a bit more coolant dripping (my friend thinks it was the same but I think it was of a greater quantity). So we shut the bike off and tried to identify where the coolant was leaking from. The crank case overflow had oil + coolant mixture coming out of it, but we topped off all of our coolant and couldn't remember if we had done an oil change previously or not, so it could be residual / too much fluid ccausing the issue.
Tomorrow my buddy is going to to take out the radiators, clean them, make sure they're not clogged, and try to make sure all lines are clear etc..
Here are the things we think we might need to check still -
Base cylinder gasket
Water pump
Obviously the radiators
Torquage of the head gasket (although again I don't think my friend would have over/under torqued it)
...
Anyone else have anything to add to the least or could point out something obvious from my description of the problem?
I really would appreciate any help on this. After I get the bike running the winter is going to consist of tearing it down, sand blasting and powder coating everything so assuming I get this thing running I'll be at trike fest next year with a sweet looking tri-z :cool:
Thanks,
-Zach
I recently picked up a tri-z (I believe it is an 86 but I'm not 100% sure), and when I picked it up it was sporadically dripping coolant out of the overflow after the bike got hot. The guy I bought it from thought it might have been a bad radiator and he threw in an extra one for me, but it didn't seem like a rad issue because after riding it for a while we found coolant in the oil. I figured that since the problem could have been any number of issues, giving it a decent ride would exasperate the problem and make diagnosis easier.
Either way, before ripping apart radiators and after reading some forum posts on here, I decided that I might as well order a versah stock gasket kit and put a new head gasket in because of the coolant in the oil. We took the head apart and only replaced the head gasket, however we noticed after taking off the head that the bike had already been bored out and had an wiseco pison installed. I tore the bike down, and my buddy took care of putting a new head gasket in for me while I was at work. He didn't have a torque wrench handy so he just torqued it down to what he figured 18/19 foot lbs of torque would be and I trust him as he's been working on cars / atvs / motorcycles etc for quite some time now. Obviously this could have been an issue but we let the bike sit for about a month after the repair job was done.
After taking care of the head gasket the bike started to have fuel issues, we think something was clogged in one of the lines or fuel pump. We took the fuel pump apart and cleaned out all the lines and afterwards the bike started up again without issue. I took the bike down the street, no more than 1/2 a mile and this time we saw quite a bit more coolant dripping (my friend thinks it was the same but I think it was of a greater quantity). So we shut the bike off and tried to identify where the coolant was leaking from. The crank case overflow had oil + coolant mixture coming out of it, but we topped off all of our coolant and couldn't remember if we had done an oil change previously or not, so it could be residual / too much fluid ccausing the issue.
Tomorrow my buddy is going to to take out the radiators, clean them, make sure they're not clogged, and try to make sure all lines are clear etc..
Here are the things we think we might need to check still -
Base cylinder gasket
Water pump
Obviously the radiators
Torquage of the head gasket (although again I don't think my friend would have over/under torqued it)
...
Anyone else have anything to add to the least or could point out something obvious from my description of the problem?
I really would appreciate any help on this. After I get the bike running the winter is going to consist of tearing it down, sand blasting and powder coating everything so assuming I get this thing running I'll be at trike fest next year with a sweet looking tri-z :cool:
Thanks,
-Zach