Apols for delay; it's on (with a bit of fiddling), I've done a few hundred miles and it seems to work as it should. Pics are below.
Note whilst this is almost a plug and play replacement, it has no thermostat installed in it, and will take a fit of fiddling to get it to fit to the bike.
I fitted it to a xcountry. This is what I did,
- Extract old rad: take off expansion tank, rad cap, hoses, fan, two plastic fan mount points (in fins), rubber grommets.
- Fitting fan on new. Size up fan location on new rad. This didnt quite work out as expected as the upper mounting hole would have meant the plastic inserts going through a cooling channel. To get round this I removed the two lower mounting pins that were on the new rad, drilled some holes further up on the plastic fan surround, and mounted the fan using M5 bolts into the drilled holes. Inserting the plastic mounts was easy enough, just easing them gently through the fins after creating a smaller pilot hole. I placed some washers between the fan surround and the rad to ensure it wasn't touching any of the fins.
- Fit expansion tank, hoses and grommets. Easy enough with some jubilee clips. Used the old bolt for the expansion tank as the one supplied wasnt long enough. The let off pipe near the rad cap is a bit long, but it did fit in the space by the frame when installed.
- Installing rad - it didn't fit on first attempt; basically it is a few mm taller than the OE rad, so whilst the pin went in the lower mount easy enough, I couldn't get the top of the rad to fit in underneath the two upper mounting points. Think this is down to the size of the core that was used, and that was a pain to source. I got around this by doing some grinding to the lower parts of the upper mounts until it would fit in.
- Fitted, connected, filled and bled system. Remember to reconnect the fan.
- refit body panels. Some of these were tight and didnt align 100%. Fixing holes did align though.
I've run the bike for a few hundred miles, and through several stationary heating cooling cycles. You can feel the heat come off the rad soon after the engine has started.
I've run other make after market rads on a G650x through winter without a thermostat and not had any issues. Think most air/temp/mixture type issues are sorted by the efi system now anyway. I cant see why this version should be any different.
Cooling. Any better? Well, the fins are stronger with greater gaps, plus both end caps are metal so will conduct heat better, but anything I say will be anecdotal as I don't have any rigs to do any scientific testing.
I've advised the manufacturer that testing has been completed and requested confirmation of a lead time etc.
As far as I am aware, it will be £420 per unit delivered to me, plus postage on to yourself.
Will update re lead times; after which message me if you want on as detailed above.
Pics below to go with the above text. Also includes a new OE rad that was used to check and build from.
Cheers to Nathan to starting this off.
Gareth
