Hi,

I took my CBR to a carnival rally today where bikes went through a village as part of the parade. My CBR 600 started to overheat at crawling pace. Didn't keep my eye on the heat gauge.

Suddenly saw it had hit red and just at that second a small amount of coolent (cup full) came out near the stand. (I guess the overflow where it had expanded with heat) I shut down straight away.

15 minutes later restarted no problem and took it on a 20 mile run and temp gauge was normal.

Have I got away with it? Or have I already damaged the engine???

Manty thanks

Phil

 

Bottom line is your fine. Your coolant may have been too full in the first place to be able to handle the expansion. Did you happen to notice if the radiator cooling fan came on ? If it did, then all's fine. If it didn't, then you may want to investigate that further.

BTW, welcome to the forum.

 

Thank you that is reassuring. I don't know about the fan, just hit the shut off as fast as I could. Seems that everything is back to normal but was worried in case that may have been a big problem. A lesson learnt for the future I think!!

Thanks very much.

Great forum. Glad to be a member. Very helpful.

Phil

 

Phil, your my kind of bike owner. A lot of riders would not think twice that their bike was overheating. Ido is right though & your bike will be fine, that's what the radiator & fan a there for.
Every year I go on a Christmas Toy run that donate toys for kids through the Salvation army. They get several thousand bikes (2009 had 3000 +) And from the muster point it takes quite a bit of time to get the bikes rolling & we all crawl along for miles between 5 & 10 KPH (3 - 6 MPH) in a procession down to the foreshore. Lots of slipping the clutch & way to slow to keep the temp down, god knows how the air cooled only bikes get on. So last year I waited a couple of clicks up the road, cause I worry for same issue you did. Don't want to kill my engine or clutch. Better to be safe than...

 

I agree, probably everything fine. The engine will usually start to 'buck'/'shudder' and complain if you are actually at the threshold of damaging it from over-heating. Sounds like you avoided that stage.

However, I would still check the coolant level, to be sure it doesn't need that extra cup that it spewed to be back to optimal.

Ern