I have discovered a small leak from my radiator cap on my Firestorm, so suspect that the cap ain’t holding the pressure in there - so gonna try a new one.
Now I have checked ebay for another cap, but can’t find one specifically for a 'storm. There are other ones on there (blackbird, cbr600 etc) which look like they might fit… but will they? Does anyone know about interchanability for honda rad caps?
Or even better does any one have a spare radiator cap I could purchase off them… or know a good place to get one (my usual one stop shop for honda parts, Davidsilver spares don’t seem to have them!).
If it’s the usual type of rad cap, the ones that look like scaled down car rad caps, the only two critical bits are, 1: that it fits and 2: it’s got the right spring to give the pressure venting when required.
The pressure venting is commonly marked on the cap so it could be there are a lot of other caps out there that will do the job just as well.
If it’s not the cap as described above, just ignore all of this.
Thanks for all your suggestions. I managed to get a new rad cap… however now the leak is even worse! It comes spewing out from under the cap when the bike starts coming up to operating temperature.
Does anyone have any ideas on what the prob might be?
I felt rather smug with myself yesterday after managing to change my cam chain tensioners succesfully… & now I’m stumped by this iritating problem…
Some rad caps are spring loaded and it sounds like yours have given up a bit - either that or the seal has persihed slightly. I think your best bet is the scrap yard.
Theres loads of sites out there where you put in what you need and over the course of the next few days you’ll get calls from various scrap yards offering you the part…ermmm if they have it.
This is exactly what I thought… hence why I purchased a new rad cap, however the problem still remained.
So I was thinking that there may be a problem somewhere else that was causing it? Or maybe the new cap I bought was a dud? Seems unlikely, especially as it looked ok… but then so does the old one???
Arghhh :w00t:
So I guess my REAL QUESTION is - Is it possible that i’m overlooking a more serious problem… or should I carry on hunting for rad caps ???
It might look the same but if its a cheap aftermarket one then they will have obviously cut a corner somewhere - and the tension of the spring will be where the saving was made.
The other thing it could be - but im not an engine expert by any means - is that your thermostat isnt working well - or at all as the fluid will always flow at the point of least resistance and the filler cap shouldnt be it…it should be the thermostat valve. Sometimes they get clogged and all they need is a clean and a good whack to free them from sticking - this is at least what I do with the thermostats on my radiators.
But like I said - someone with more knowledge of the inner workings will no doubt put us staright on this as it might be an impossible scenario depending on the flow of the fluid, which like you, I have no idea about!
The other scenario is that you simply have too much fluid in there - you’ll have to check the level in your expansion bottle when cold to see if this is the case.
