Today, well, yesterday and the day before, I was trying to fix the very slight coolant leak I had found last time I rode the bike - there was a small damp patch on the radiator and some on my boot/leg - a sure sign there is a leak (I've had this before!).
So I took the radiator off the bike and attempted to find the leak - using plain water, a cork to plug on of the holes and a slightly modified bicycle pump to provide a little pressure - with previously radiators, where there has been more significant holes I've been able to make little jets of water spray output when the pressure was applied.
No such luck with this one - couldn't even get a damp patch to appear. I succeeded in firing a cork across my yard (with accompanying 'pop') and slightly soaking myself in luke warm water.
So, not wanting the leak to reappear once I put it back on the bike, I had a cunning plan. Firstly I gave the radiator a quick lick of paint with a spray can:
Didn't come out too badly, considering I did very little prep, other than quickly cleaning the radiator. Full marks also to the cheap paint from B&M - £2.99 for a 400ml spray can of gloss black.
Now, in a belt-and-braces type of way, I thought that I should try and ensure it wasn't going to leak (I've previously had annoying problems with radiators), so I got some K-seal:
Now, I am the first to give out the dire warnings about Radweld (and similar products) blocking up your bike, however, previously when I changed the coolant on my wife's bike (another CB5) I noticed that it was all 'coppery' - it had K-seal in the system! No dire things have happened to that bike, so I thought that judicious use of K-seal shouldn't do any harm in my bike, plus it is silicate free, so its 'gumming up' potential should be limited.
By
judicious I mean that I only used 90ml of K-seal, rather than the whole bottle. Feel free to give me abuse if you think I am wrong.
Here's a picture of the bike sporting its 'new' radiator:
I really must make myself a better radiator cover/grille - my current one is saggy and doesn't really sit in the right place. Anyway, that's for another day.
So, I let the bike idle for a bit and got it up to temperature (it's been nice and warm here) - no sign of coolant leaks! The fan still works! Hooray!
I also gave the connections on my coils a good clean (they had furred up) and gave my kill-switch a good dosing of GT85 spray - the power for the coils (I think) comes via the kill switch and I'd been having a nasty problem above about 6k revs, so I thought this was a good idea.
The proof of the pudding will be in the eating, so I decided to take the bike out for a ride. It was hot so I couldn't really wear by padded winter jacket. Sadly my leather jacket had better ideas - it had gone all mouldy:
Horrible isn't it? I'd suggest you don't keep your leather jacket in your somewhat damp, not very well heated bedroom over the winter. Anyway, the mould succumbed to some carefully applied damp kitchen paper and some shaking. Still smelled a bit musty, but I wasn't really surprised about that.
Anyway, so I took it for a ride - amazingly no coolant leaked out all over my boot and the performance was a lot better, so my electrical cleaning had obviously helped, so I'm counting this as a win.
Here's a quick pic of the CB5 on top of a local 'hill' (no real hills around here!):
So hopefully next weekend it will be off to get an MOT... fingers crossed about that too!