SV650 K5 coolant filling?

[Sid Squid]

SV cooling system simple to fill and bleed - put the bike on its sidestand so the rad cap is at the highest point in the system, fill rad and start engine, squeeze hoses and give a little tweak of revs. When you can't get anymore in the rad put the cap on and fill the expansion bottle. Check level again when its cold and top up if needed. The SV is nothing special when it comes to filling with coolant.

One more thing: Please don't listen to endlessly regurgitated horror stories about head gaskets.

thanks all, very helpful.

My haynes manual mentions that you also have to shake the bike from side to side which sounds really silly to me but thought I share .

Again thank you all. I shall give it a go tomorrow. do you guys know what is the total capacity ?

Shaking will bring bubboles to the top i guess, cant hurt to do it..unless you drop it lol. At a guess, 1.5/2 litres.

Hi guys this subject been bothering me for a couple weeks....

My radiator is full to the cap when on side stand.... However Expansion tank has never been topped up and has always looked empty as far as i can remember.

Do i need to put coolant in it to the minimum level or should it be left alone? I.e just for expansion from the rad.

[Bibio]

you need to top the expansion tank up with mixture to the F mark. sometimes the bike will spit out what it does not want threw the overflow of the tank and is perfectly normal till it finds it's own level.

I replaced the water by undoing the drainnut . It was strange though as nothing came out until I removed the radiotorcap. I guess there was some sort of air suction that didn't let anything out.

also I didn't follow the haynes manual asit was saying that you should fill the radiotor again, run it for 10 mins anddrain it before doing the final refill.



I Just went on straight to filling and didhalf half water and antifreeze
One questions though, I filled the radiatorwhile the bike was on stand ( to theleft) so took more water than lets say if it was straight or leaning to right,did I do it wrong ??
Also I filled the expansion tank tomaximum(F) . but after few days found the expansion tank on L .
In my view this could mean,
1. Thebike is leaking ( don’t think so)
2. Theradiator water has gone into the engine circulation etc and needed a top up sohas taken some water from the expansion tank.
Any ideas?
By the way, how do you check your radiator level,when the bike is on stand (left) , lean to right or straight?
Also something off topic, while ridingtoday I noticed that one side of the radiator isn’t bolted into the chasiee butthe bracket which is connected to the chassie, is that the same with your bike?Hope this makes sense

[jambo]

Originally Posted by jambo

When filling the coolant there are 2 parts that need to be checked:
The radiator filler cap is where you'd be putting 90% of your coolant. Check that with the bike on the side-stand the radiator is full when you open the cap.

The expansion tank is the white bottle where a small additional amount of coolant goes. Filling this up will not fill the radiator. When the coolant system gets to a certain pressure (a little over 1 bar from memory) the valve in the radiator cap lifts slightly allowing some fluid to escape from the system into the line to the expansion tank. When the system cools down the pressure becomes slightly negative and a much lighter valve in the rad cap allows coolant to be drawn back into the radiator from the coolant bottle.

When you fill a system and it heat cycles you can end up with a little air in the radiator getting pushed out under pressure, and replaced by coolant once the system cools. It's not uncommon to find the expansion bottle level a little lower after a little while because of this. You need to make sure the system is cold when you check it or the level may adjust as the system cools.

Jambo

As per my comment, it's quite common for the expansion chamber level to drop as the last of the air is pushed out of the radiator and coolant system, and fluid is drawn back in.

Nothing to worry about provided when you top the expansion tank back up it stabilises.

The radiator should be 100% full, shouldn't be a need to re-open it. Leave it be

Jambo

[Sid Squid]

The cooling system is sealed, the coolant won't come out of the drain hole until air can get in the top of the system, which is completely normal.
If there's no leaks, and it isn't overheating and blowing coolant out the expansion breather, then the drop in coolant level means that you didn't get all the air out when you filled it. Check the radiator is full, it it is and as long as the level doesn't continue to drop, all is well. Filling the system on the sidestand is fine as the radiator cap is at the highest point in the system that way, in order to best fill the system, fill it as much as you can and start the motor, rev it a little and squeeze the hoses until you can't get any more in, of you rev it and the level drops it isn't full. After doing that it's still not unusual to need a top up after it's heated and cooled a few times.