2016 Vaquero in the shop for 2 weeks

[ErikB]

Hey guys, just wanted to document here what is wrong with the bike. When searching the web, I only found one other report of the same thing from a 2009 Nomad. Therefore in the future, I figured maybe someone having the same issue will find this. I don't think it is common...

When I bought the bike earlier this year in March, it was built from the crate, and I picked it up a few days later. I noticed a weird "crust" on the rear cylinder head about half way down on the left side of the motor. It was on one of the fins. I just assumed it was "gunk" from the factory, didn't think much of it. I then proceeded to put about 600 miles on over the course of a few weeks, had the oil changed, and then took the bike on a 4000 mile road trip this summer.

I hadn't ridden it much in the past few months as I have 3 bikes, and last week noticed this gunk was still there, but there was more of it and some droplets had fallen onto the oil filler cap and the kickstand etc. Looked like coolant to me. This caused me to take a closer look. I saw no obvious cracks, and there are no joints or gaskets there... also no leaks from elsewhere. It was just.. emanating from the cylinder head inside of one fin.

It ended up being as I suspected, a porous casting of the cylinder head. In other words when the motor heats up, coolant weeps right through the metal. Over the course of 4800 miles it was not enough to even register a dip in the coolant tank, so I'd guess it was just spitting out a drop or two each ride.

Anyway, Kawasaki is replacing the rear cylinder head under warranty. I should have the bike back by the end of next week. Otherwise, I didn't notice any performance problems, run great, etc. Had they declined the warranty, I was just going to put a bead of JB Weld inside that fin and shrug it off for now.

I did make a 2 hour video of my summer trip from Colorado to California and back on the Vaquero if anyone is interested. I'll look for a photo/video forum on here, instead of this tech one...