While working in the area of the air cleaner, I leaned on a black plastic pipe and it cracked….oops. At first I thought I would just splice in some hose to repair, but one thing led to another and the plastic connector on the radiator itself broke….oh boy. Time to look at this as an opportunity to upgrade
The first thing that needed to happen, was removing the radiator.These workshop manual instructions looked like a lot of work.This was going to take hours……
Removing the radiator was much easier than I expected. After removing the upper fan cowl, I was surprised that I had plenty of room to remove the bottom fan cowl without removing the fan itself.
The trick was to get side access to the radiator, so I removed the battery box….….and air cleaner housing to get access to remove both of the mounting brackets. After removing the two front brackets, unscrewing the oil cooler mounted to the radiator, disconnecting the two radiator hoses and disconnecting the temp sensor at the bottom right side of the radiator, the radiator was easily removed. This plastic pipe bleeds air from the cooling system into the coolant reservoir. I am sure the pipe is nice and flexible when new, but mine was very brittle and easily cracked. Replacing this pipe is only about $25, but it didn’t seem to be a very reliable setup. The radiator shop suggested replacing with copper tubing. So I bought a new radiator and a length of 5/16″ copper tubing from my local hardware store.I used my small pipe bender that is designed for brake tubing to bend the copper tubing.Added a piece of 5/16″ fuel hose as strain relief needed when raising the coolant reservoir to bleed the system.All buttoned up and much sturdier than stock. Just needed to be careful not to put any strain on the plastic connector on the radiator.
