Cold weather and bike engines

[ph'er(zzr1200)]

I was riding home last night and happened to look at the temperature gauge on the bike. I was on the motorway and it was reading up in the normal range, looked again a few seconds later and it was down on the cold line, watched it for a while and it went up and down about every 30 secs.

It was cold last night but this must mean that my thermostat is reacting too slowly for the amount of heat that the bike dissipates in cold weather at speed.

Has any body else experienced this on bikes?

I normaly block out half the radiator in the coldest weather because the carbs freeze up otherwise, but have never seen this before.

Paul

[Robbo SPS]

My temp guage runs at about 1/3rd in cold weather or very heavy rain.

Usual is 1/2 along the dial.

Mine ( CBR6 FX ) runs fine and i dont suffer the guage moving. And... to this day i havent had Carb Icing issues with this bike . I did with my old ZZr6.

I love the different exhaust rasp in cold weather. I dont like the constant washing of road salt morning and night !!

[bennyboysvuk]

I've never experienced this in the cold on my GSXR600. The only noticable difference is that she makes slightly more power in the extreme cold...which is nice.

Where's the temperature sensor on the 1200 then? I wonder if it's on it's way out or if it really is just adversely affected by the cold.

[Guzzi Steve]

I used to ride a TZR250 in the winter,& that was very prone to it.It would show just below normal temp on the level,but down hill it would read cold.In summer it would read the same regardless.Except in heavy traffic.

[dannylt]

Call your dealer - does that bike normally do it? Sounds odd to me, like the thermostat is lazy, but they usually just fail. Certainly my S3 is steady at a few degrees below hot weather temp.

[z1000]

I've been wondering the same thing , my Z1000 goes up and down between 102c and about 73c. I was always under the impression that to maximise performance on any engine , controlling certain variables tightly , such as water temp , was imperative(?). I assumed that I was wrong. My dealer said "Well , it's got a big radiator " but this thread makes me think again.Perhaps it's a Kawasaki fault?

So is the consensus that such variations are wrong ?

[BliarOut]

My consensus is that ZZR's is b0llocksed

[ph'er(zzr1200)]

BliarOut said:

My consensus is that ZZR's is b0llocksed

Thanks for the informed response!

Looks like I need to look at a thermostat change and rad flush to start with, at least I'm not going mad.