hebegebes

Member
Oct 30, 2001
41
0
Here in Honolulu, the traffic is getting worse. In turn, my KLR650 gets pretty hot when idling which makes me hotter than I need to be. Here is the question: can I permanently remove my thermostat? It never gets below 56 degrees and never above 92 here, so would it be safe. From my understanding, the water is kept from flowing all the time by the thermostat because because the engine needs a minimum operating temperature in cold weather. I'd like for it to be able to have cooler water running constantly, if possible to do without causing harm in some other way. Is there another use for it?

Thanks for the help!
 

CRfury

Member
Jan 16, 2003
33
0
I would say it would be perfectly safe just let her warm up a bit before taking off on cool mornings. I dont know if this would help your hot running from idling in traffic though as the bike would already be hot and the thermostat would be open if it it functioning properly. Just my thoughts though.

Eric
 

JasonJ

Member
Jun 15, 2001
1,150
1
I would leave it in. The normal running temp the thermostat is set at is much higher that the air temp. Its important the bike get to normal operating temp to run right and not wear the bore and rings. I would invest in water wetter or some other heat transfer additive. The KLR should have an electric fan on it, is it working ok? You could also try to get a second fan for it and mount it on the other radiator as well. Check your anti freeze mix. If your thick on anti freeze it runs hot and lots of shops will just dump straight anti freeze in when building or working on them. If it never gets near freezing temp there, you might consider just running straight distilled water with some corrosian and heat tranfer additives. Other than that, a bike is a hot place to be sitting in stand still or stop and go traffic. If the bike is not over heating, its fine, your the one who is hot :) .
 

splatt

Resident mental case
~SPONSOR~
Dec 1, 2001
908
14
The problem you face by removing the thermostat is the coolant will circulate to fast. To get proper cooling the coolant needs to slow down so the radiator can do it's job. 

 

Steve 
 

JasonJ

Member
Jun 15, 2001
1,150
1
Thinking about it, there is no reason the coolant would go faster. The fluid is not compressable, so any restriction in the flow would simpily require more power to be absorbed by the pump rotor to move it untill the point the rotor blades stall wich would not happen since the system is designed to use the thermostat. There is a by pass that the system must use when the thermostat is closed, but those bypasses are usally fully closed when the thermostat is open. The coolant can not go faster than the efflux speed of the pump wich is controlled by the motor speed.
 

hebegebes

Member
Oct 30, 2001
41
0
Originally posted by JasonJ
I would leave it in. The normal running temp the thermostat is set at is much higher that the air temp. Its important the bike get to normal operating temp to run right and not wear the bore and rings. I would invest in water wetter or some other heat transfer additive. The KLR should have an electric fan on it, is it working ok? You could also try to get a second fan for it and mount it on the other radiator as well. Check your anti freeze mix. If your thick on anti freeze it runs hot and lots of shops will just dump straight anti freeze in when building or working on them. If it never gets near freezing temp there, you might consider just running straight distilled water with some corrosian and heat tranfer additives. Other than that, a bike is a hot place to be sitting in stand still or stop and go traffic. If the bike is not over heating, its fine, your the one who is hot :) .
The KLR 650 has only one radiator, and yes, the one radiator's fan is working fine. The fan does seem to kick on once the bike is noticably hot - maybe a little too late. I guess wiring it to run constantly wouldn't hurt.
 

JasonJ

Member
Jun 15, 2001
1,150
1
Just watch the charging system. The charging system on these bikes is not great and at its worse at idel. If your going to idel in traffic or alot of stop and go, I would put a toggle switch on the fan and the head light. So you can kill the light durring the day if your just sitting and run the fan. On my Honda Street bike the fuse block is right inbetween the bars and I leave the cover off so if im in stop and go traffic and the fan is running hard Ill pull the headlight fuse and put it in one of the spare slots.
 

jaluka21

Member
Mar 5, 2004
10
0
mathew shaw

Had the same problem on a KLR600. Notorius bikes for overheating. KLR specialist bike shop in South Africa(pretty hot weather too) put in a new thermostat and added a manual switch on the bars for manual on/off of the cooling fan if I was working the motor hard or stop/start. If I forgot to put the fan on manually, it would still kick in automatically. Also try change the radiator anode to one with a lower temp. rating so as to switch on the fan a bit sooner than the stock anode.
 
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