That's encouraging news, I have to say. So, with reasonably clean rads and properly functioning fans, the bike can cope...
From talking to Chris at CJS, I'm sure he said the ECU turns the engine off before damage would occur, about 125c I think. With no fan my track bike has seen 112-117c a number of times and is still sweet as a nut. I do use high quality coolant though.
I read that there is no automatic cut off for safety reasons as Ducati would rather a crippled engine than a crippled rider. Makes sense to me - crippled engines don't sue...
I admit it's not something I've heard from anyone else, and i wasn't really paying attention when Chris was telling me as i only had the problem he'd just told me about rattling about in my head. But, wether an engine turns off or blows up, the result to the rider is the same, if not worse for a destructive failure as the engine may not stay fluid tight increasing the chance of a crash. So there is some sense to it.
Was riding along in my automobile a couple of days ago and realised that the 'normal' engine temperature with the needle vertical in the gauge, halfway between the two extremes, is 100 Centigrade. Usual free riding temperature on the 999 is 70 centigrade. I start to worry when it creeps higher and panic begins to set in when it gets to 100 and above. Not sure how I got this paranoid but I think it was being in a traffic jam with the fans whirring away but the temperature still getting higher and higher...
The fans on the Multistrada push air forward through the radiator which is kind of odd, I would have thought that they would have pulled air through the radiator.
Gosh, that does seem odd. Never thought to check which way they push or pull on the 999, just assumed they pull...
Stuck some Suzuki plates in the clutch yesterday, combined with the lithium grease mod and quiet clutch mod. I ran the motor to check all was well and allowed it to reach the point at which the fans cut in. In that ambient temp the fans did their job perfectly, cutting in sequentially and controlling the temperature in the region of 100-105c. So the system can work properly. I guess the answer then may be to optimise it for higher ambient temperatures as well by keeping the rad clean and clear and maybe using a more efficient coolant as well if that isn't quite enough . I forgot to check if the fans are pushing or pulling air though! The bike was in the garage, so if the fans were pushing they would have been flowing air at the design rate. If they were to push air while riding slowly in traffic, maybe the natural airflow would then have the effect of reducing or even cancelling out the flow produced by the fans.
Exactly. Anyone else care to do some research on this ? I once had a Sharp combination oven with a grill. In the manual it said that when using the grill the temperature in the oven was regulated to 100deg C, only it didn't, the temperature continued to ramp up. The manual had circuit diagram, this was a long time ago, and I traced the wires to find out which of the thermostats was supposed operate under these conditions to find that the thermostat was OUTSIDE the insulated part of oven and therefore did not see the temperature it was supposed to be controlling. So mistakes do occur at the design and testing phase.
All my Duc's (8 of em) have been 1st fan at 103 2nd at 105, Earlier in this thread someone said about flashing ECU and lowering cut in Temp for fans I asked my local Ducati mechanic and he advised against doing it saying it can cause more problems than it fixes. 15 minutes to get from one end of brighton to the other with a dozen set of traffic lights, bike tends to run up to 110 c but once you clear that and get some airflow it drops back down to 90ish. I have only ever had a boil over once filtering through traffic got to end of road and pulled over to get coffee and turned ignition off to be greeted by the hissing of water escaping through breather / overflow. The trick is to turn engine of but leave dash lights on that lets the fans run enabling cooling so you don't boil over.
A recent suggestion on here was to leave the ignition on but with the kill switch in the engine off position if you want the fans to run with the engine off. Any idea what the temp was when your engine started to boil its coolant??
It was my 899 and it was around 112c I turned ignition back on and fans came on straight away. The hissing lasted 15 seconds or there about's and prob only a 4 or 5 espresso cup fulls of water on floor
Water boils at 100 c. Don't matter if system is pressurised or not water still boils at same temp. Tank may have been over filled
Water at 100 c is water at 100c, but that's all. Whether it boils or not is determined by the ambient pressure of the system.
Indeed it is possible to have liquid water at 300c, provided the pressure is high enough (close to 1300psi!). See; Water Vapor Pressure Boiling Point Equations Formulas Calculator
