thermobob comments from way down south.

[Jeff Khoury]

Once again, I don't disagree that a consistent temperature is a good thing. In a perfect world (from your engine's perspective) you'd jump on the highway and run a steady 55MPH forever and all would be well. We don't live in that world however. If you look at his own charts, without the Thermo-Bob, the oil temp (the important one, second chart from the bottom) shows a steady and consistent climb to a plateau once he's on his second freeway run. It isn't until this point that the engine reached full operating temperature. There are no wild fluctuations in oil temp even though water temp varies greatly. The only difference is that the 'bobbed engine settled out about 15 degrees hotter than without. There's no statistically significant difference in the "sway" of the oil temp with or without the 'bob. All it does is make your engine run hotter, which almost anyone will tell you is a bad thing. Once again, water temp is NOT an accurate representation of what's going on inside your engine. -Jeff Khoury From: "eddie" To: "KLR650 list" DSN_KLR650@yahoogroups.com> Sent: Monday, June 20, 2011 8:28:42 PM Subject: RE: [DSN_KLR650] ThermoBob comments from way down south. Years ago, I visited an airport where they did a lot of sail plane/ glider flying (Peach State Glider Port, Williamson,Ga). I inquired about the small tow plane having (what appeared to me) a very large oil cooler on the aero engine. My comment of "With a cooler that size, the engine should last a long time" was met with a "not really" response. Seems the engine got really hot going up and cooled rapidly coming back down quickly to take up the next tow. The thermal shock did bad things to the engine. Lycoming apples to KLR oranges, maybe. But: Fast fwd to my once new KLR650 and it's liquid cooled engine. From day 1, I remember watching the temperature gauge "twitch" a lot. It would reach a given point and pause for a bit, drop, go back to the original spot and over again, It was subtle, but noticable. I was not sure why until I read Bill Watson's explainations of how the OEM cooling set up gives little blasts of cold coolant to the ever increasingly hot engine. Wanna warp a piece of hot metal? Hit it with cool liquid. Where's the liquid go through a KLR ? The cylinder & head. Two things you don't ever want to see warp. The thermostat in the Thermo-Bob kit is indeed hotter than what is in the KLR from the factory. However, the coolant overall reaches a more consistent temperature without subjecting the engine to the blasts of colder liquid. If the temp's too high for your taste, I'm sure Bill could help a person source one a few shades cooler and still get the job done. The 'Bobbed KLR650 I have now reaches one spot on the temp gauge quickly and stays there. No more "twitching" from the erratic flow of hot/cold/hot/coolant. At 12,000 miles, it doesn't use oil and never runs hot commuting in 100F traffic. I use Bel-Ray pre-mix cycle coolant and a brand name, motorcycle-specific oil. Your results may vary. eddie in Ga. PS: Manufacturers can and do screw up basic stuff like a cooling system or clutch. I had a 2002 DL1000 with a bad case of the "chudder"{look it up}between 3,500 and 4,500 rpm. I read multiple arguments on the subject saying I wasn't riding it right (lugging, etc...) Really? Me and dozens of others had the exact same issue with their bikes. Suzuki recorded my complaint on the customer (dis)service line and yet a week later had no record of my call. The owner of the selling Suzuki shop test rode it and came back immediately, "That thing ain't right." He called Suzuki and explained it was not operator error. They reluctantly replaced the clutch basket and the problem went away...for a while. They put the same type part in the bike - a part that has since been redesigned. The TL1000 engine it was based upon had no such issues (diff. parts). [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

[Eddie]

No, a coolant temperature gauge is not an accurate representation of what's going on inside an engine. But, Kawasaki saw fit to omit an oil pressure light and/or an oil temp gauge on our bikes. If an engine runs low on oil, which some KLRs can do in a hurry, rising water temp will let you know it's too late and you are about to get stranded. =) eddie

----- Original Message ----- From: Jeff Khoury To: transalp1@... Cc: KLR650 list Sent: 6/20/2011 11:52:05 PM Subject: [Norton AntiSpam] Re: [DSN_KLR650] ThermoBob comments from way down south. (snip) Once again, water temp is NOT an accurate representation of what's going on inside your engine. -Jeff Khoury [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]