Cooling reconfiguration question

[Racerj404]

I want to know if anyone can see the benafit of running the cooling system the way they come off the bike stock. The stock way will make me have to run one extra hose across my rail. I did some really HITECH drawings of stock and what I want to do.

Stock it comes out of the thermostate and into a Y that goes to each radiator, the one on the left has the temp sensor that turns on the fan, then it comes out the bottom of the left radiator and into the bottm of the right radiator and back to the water pump.

I want to come out of the thermostate into the top of the left radiator and out the bottom of it into the top of the right radiator and back into the water pump. I will cap off the other hole in the right radiator.

[plkracer]

It could be that way so it would be easier to pump fluid. I bet fluid rarely goes through both radiators before going back through the engine. The radiator on the left is probably cooler. Don't know what purpose that would serve though, but stock bike radiators will not work very well. tehy are too small for a buggy. you want something like 12 by 18 inches or so.

[DuneMe]

I'm not sure about the engine / drawing you are looking at but, looking at the first configuration, I would recommend plumbing the return of the radiator on the left into a T fitting where the radiator on the right would also T into. *Try to match the lengths of tubing so your line-losses (head) are equal and you should have equal flow through your cooling system. *

Piping it the way you have it shown on the bottom will double your flow requirements and if your pumping system isn't designed for it you may not have the ability to double your flow which could result in a loss of cooling. *You'll have more head loss with the second system since you are only flowing through one pipe now and both radiators too. *This will as stated above, result in more head-loss.

[Racerj404]

I forgot to say that the engine and radiators are off a Honda RC51.

[greasemnky]

Buy a civic radiator. The RC51's are worth some good cash on ebay, and they suck on the buggies. I bought a pair for my fl583 because they have a bypass built into them. Allows cold coolant directly back into the engine to heat it up faster. I needed that for the sled, or so I thought. Ran hot, got rid of it, put in a civic rad, problem solved.

And those RC51's in good shape are worth 100+ A civic rad is 40

[nutz4sand]

I agree that you are a bit better off going to one bigger radiator off a small car. But if you have to use the bike radiators (for space reasons)(remember your pushing more weight most likely on abrupt hills perhaps and less airflow off road VS somewhat flat street cruising) You could run the coolant thru the bike radiators then run it to one more radiator off (just for example) a Polaris quad. Then it could have the Polaris (or honda or...) fan to kick on if it needed to cool the coolant more. Just make sure that the radiators are always plumbed with the coolant going in the top if they are down flow design. Bill

[boilermaker]

From your drawing stock has radiators are hooked up in parallel and you want to hook up in series, so stock has both getting the hot water at the same time and you want to have hot water flow thru one and then the other.
The thing is that the hotter the water the greater the tempeture difference between water and air the more efficient a radiator/heat exchanger is and that is the best way to use the stock radiators.
The better way is, like they are saying, get a small car radiator and it'll work like a charm.......

[Racerj404]

Thanks for the help I'm going to cut my radiators out and buy a Honda Civic radiator and start over again, no big deal they were only tacked. Thanks again. [smilie=icon_bolt.gif]