So just to add to the list of bullshit problems I've had recently with this bike, I got home the other night from work at around midnight & was treated to the sweet maple suyrup smell of coolant & my left boot/entire left side of my bike glazed in glycol. If I didn't enjoy riding this bike so much I'd ghost-ride it off the nearest cliff. /rant. I perused the other rad threads, and noticed a few went the e-bay/China route. There was a mention of GPI racing welded rads. Anyone have a report on longevity/durability of the child-labor assembled units? They have pairs for $219 shipped. I can swallow spending that on a pair. I just don't have the time for anything that I'd have to modify/fabricate brackets to work, so using the 250 rads or anything that requires finagaling to work is out. Has to be plug-n-play. And I want them to be dead reliable.
Plug and play off the shelf, OEM Alexons are your only option... The fan bracket is simple enough to figure out on the 250 radiators. How bad is your leak? My guess is that it's the inner-most tube, towards the center? I replaced one radiator with OEM a couple years ago. When the other leaked, I just had that tube plugged and welded by dirt bike shop nearby.
Haven't looked at it close yet. At first I thought it was the lower hose that was leaking. Going to put a pressure tester on it today.
This is the unit I was looking at: http://pages.ebay.com/link/?nav=item.view&alt=web&id=251851389910&globalID=EBAY-US
Is that a picture of the actual radiators, if so you'd need all new hoses because the nipples are in different locations than on the factory 630 Alexons. I got my spares off of a guy here that had gotten them for a TC250.
I've bought 2 sets of Chinese rads; Warning; aftermarket braces and guards may not fit Chinese rads. Set #1 The set for my yz125 worked fine, the aftermarket braces fit but the aftermarket guards didn't fit. I've been running them with aftermarket braces oem plastic guards for 2 years with no problem Set #2 2011 YZ450 aftermarket braces or guards won't fit. A minor crash at an Arenacross type track bent the crap out of the rad and broke the tank plastics so I went back to OEM rads and aftermarket braces... next week another similar minor crash in practice and zero breakage.
Tested the system with a pressure unit. 2 pinholes in the innermost fin. On the backside of the rad there was galling on the mounting rail where something (haven't discerned what yet) was rubbing on the rad. Brought it to a local shop, I noticed the galling, mentioned it and he agreed that it was probably the cause of the leak. He also questioned the mounting and was legit surprised that the outer mounting point was only the rad shrouds. Possibility that it's not the rad being a cheap unit but poor mounting choices and lack of torsional support. Going to look into the rad guards, if they're aluminum/metal then that should lend some rigidity to the units.
