Thoughts on pinging

[blowndodge]

Ol' BD is at it again ::)

Can't leave well enough alone. The garage has talked a lot about pinging Nomads. From what I've read either you bike never pings or pings like crazy. Whats the answer? Not real sure but the noggin is working overtime!

I'm sure that the Nomad owners who've have pinging can relate that to hot days or when the radiator fan has been working. Some people never have a Nomad that runs that hot. I'm starting to think it's geographic in nature and answers can be brainstormed.

Us in the lower states never have a problem with putting our bikes away for the winter and/or have temps that are below zero. All of our bikes are liquid cooled and use, now here is the magic word, "Antifreeze". Notice it's not called "Antiboilover". Although it does that to a small degree.

It's called antifreeze for a reason. If you ran straight water in your motor and it got down well below 32 degrees you could crack your engine block. Thus antifreeze was invented. Works well too in the extreme climates some of you Nomad owners live.

Problem is, is that antifreeze kind of sucks when it comes to keeping an engine cool. Water is still the best "liquid" when it comes to transfering heat away from any source. Yes water boils but in a sealed pressurized system the boiling point is raised to about 230 degrees or 18 degrees about normal.

Now I'm not advocating straight water but a far more deluted mixture of antifreeze to "distilled" water. Instead of 50/50 mix more like 75/25 mix of distilled water to antifreeze for us in the lower warmer states. Some of the two stroke early water cooled race bike I would ride in desert races ran way cooler with hardly any antifreeze whatsoever. Usually 25-45 degrees F cooler.

a 75/25 percent mixture will still stop freezing from zero to -10
F but allow a much higher transfer of heat away from the engine during the hotter months. distilled demineralized water will not develope any "buildup" in the engine so it's safe to run a much reduced radiator solution.

Another food for thought. The Thermostat is set to open at above 135 degrees F. and the fan is set to go on above 212 degrees F.

I don't know anyone with a "running too cool" problem with their Nomads. Most cars today have thermostats opening usually at 195 F. Optimum temp for emissions burning. Nomad's open at 135 F ??? That's like not even having one!

After looking at the cooling system and seeing how much the thermostat obstructs the water passage I'm going to screw around this summer and on the KawaNOW get together in Mesquite.

I'm going to flush my cooling system and get Engine Ice (Enviromentally frendly) and Distilled water and run it at 75% distilled water and 25% Engine Ice and no thermostat just to see the difference. I've been reading lots of information on this and I like what I've read.

A buddy of mine turned me on to thinking about this when I was talking to him about how hot my Nomad runs in the summertime. He works for Mac's Radiator and asked me the size of my engine and how much liquid was in the cooling system. I told him 2.4 quarts and he was dumbfounded! He said that was woefully tiny for a 1600cc motor. He suggested trying to get the most out of my cooling system or get a much larger radiator!

The above ideas are what I've come up with. Since the fan kicks on at 212 F. and the mixtue I'm going to run under a pressurized system wouldn't boil until 240 the fan would stop any chance of boil over and the antifreeze will be more than sufficient for where I live as far a cold temperatures go. Never get colder than 30 is southern california. We shall see....to be cont.....