• Hi everyone,

    As you all know, Coffee (Dean) passed away a couple of years ago. I am Dean's ex-wife's husband and happen to have spent my career in tech. Over the years, I occasionally helped Dean with various tech issues.

    When he passed, I worked with his kids to gather the necessary credentials to keep this site running. Since then (and for however long they worked with Coffee), Woodschick and Dirtdame have been maintaining the site and covering the costs. Without their hard work and financial support, CafeHusky would have been lost.

    Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve been working to migrate the site to a free cloud compute instance so that Woodschick and Dirtdame no longer have to fund it. At the same time, I’ve updated the site to a current version of XenForo (the discussion software it runs on). The previous version was outdated and no longer supported.

    Unfortunately, the new software version doesn’t support importing the old site’s styles, so for now, you’ll see the XenForo default style. This may change over time.

    Coffee didn’t document the work he did on the site, so I’ve been digging through the old setup to understand how everything was running. There may still be things I’ve missed. One known issue is that email functionality is not yet working on the new site, but I hope to resolve this over time.

    Thanks for your patience and support!

Another cooling system woe

RockinRod

RockinRod

Husqvarna
AA Class
Guys,
earlier this year my Terras cooling system went haywire, I read the threads checked fuses, relays, sensors and finally got to the culprit ...the fan motor. Everything else was good except when I plugged in a new fuse and powered up the bike, bam it would blow, I tried one size fuse in amp up for giggles and it blew as quickly. To satisfy my curiosity, I d/c'd the fan put in another fuse and with my 12 volt tester found power was coming down to the fan...
So yesterday a friend who is just back from a disastrous trip to Ak on his 1200 GS and I went to the closest dealer for KTM and BMW there is where my Terra came from...they still have access to parts fiches ...while my bud was testing bikes me and the parts guy tried to find a cooling fan on the fiche, long story short its not listed separate from radiator, like where we find the thermostat, in the right side tank on the radiator....Weird design, even more weird the fan was awol....
I got the name off the fan motor searched it and they are all over the aftermarket world, got a good source bookmarked and soon as I can pull the fan and measure ,I'll get me a new fan on the way....I had looked at several of the BMWs on the floor at the dealership and to my amazement they are on most of their bikes too.....I priced one for a GS650 and it was ridiculous as it could be imagined....on line they started at $50ish dollars US. I'm glad it was as easy to diagnose as it was
sort of let down by the mfg for the sketchy fiches, even in one of the on line svc manuals I found here there was very little referenced by the mfg...Soon as I get back from a short holiday I'll roiund up the new fan, get it on and report back and update this thread....
 
Forcing the end user to purchase the fan in bundle with the radiator is anachronous at best, borderline fraudulent at worst, considering how the fan is one of the most likely components to fail.
 
So, here is an not so obvious question (at least to me). Where is the thermostat that turns the fan on? Is it built in? I will check the schematics but just wondering if anyone knows.
 
It looks like the thermostat is a standard bmw part #17111464985. The schematic is to small to see on my phone but it looks like the same one. They are running around 43.00.
 
AH HA,
To complete this little journey....I and a friend got together and with the aid of an analog multimeter, we double checked all electrical components we could, ruled out the relay the fuse blew but a new one is in place and now holding fine. There are three relays under the seat and good news is they are all the same, and all of mine were working. We checked the temp sensing unit, has continuity and receiving a signal from the harness.I did find the thermostat, its in the radiator tank on the right side as you are sitting on the bike looking down. I took the number from the fan,searched it and found the mfg ,Spal an Itralian firm has an office out in Iowa. They won't take direct orders but are set to take an online order, with Fed Ex to deliver. I had replaced the very weak Castrol coolant with some locally sourced "engine ice" from cycle gear.
I got the fan in pretty short order was about$80.US and about $8 for shipping and it came with a different connector that OEM of course.
Its a "weather-pack" automotive style, similar to the ones on the bike, just larger, found them on line through Dell City {electric supply house}
I could have tried to use the old original connectors but I had disassembled the connectors to find a nearly scorched alloy pins and felt a better connection was in order, I sourced a weather pack female connector locally soldered them in used shrink tubing on both wires re-wrapped them
then set about to install the fan. It is held in place with some bolts that go through the radiator, actually they are adaptors that accept Phillips head screws, if I'd thought about it I would have gone to a hex head screw/bolt its a tight place for one of these and I could see me rounding one of those buggers out, thanks to good tools it was fairly painless. I got my buddy off the lift, backed him out onto my patio and fired him up, watching the temp gauge rise I was hoping and hoping then it kicked in, talk about relief....I'm sure that for the most part everyone here with a Terra or a Strada that has been Terrafied we like enjoy love our bikes but this has given me pause to think about a different bike....I have set my bike up with different goodies like so many of us have and its ready,set to go...but what is next to creep up on me? I'm gonna roll the dice and let them fall where they may , I like my Terra still for all the reasons I bought it in the first place....and am glad its fixed, LET'S Ride
Rod


Addendum;
Well went out for a short ride to check whether or not I was successful in my repair...
I was the fan kicked in kept the temps under control....gonna verify coolant level this afternoon...so far so good!
Rod
 
Do you have a link to the fan source and the part number please? I'd like to put it in the Parts Index in ADV.
 
Howdy DRZCharlie,
That's a really good idea, as our bikes have been made obsolete any source for support parts will be invaluable in the future.
Going through the online svc manuals I could find was a great help, even better than my dealer, on his fiche it wasn't shown by apart number.
The company is SPAL USA
addy: 1731 SE Oralabor Rd
Ankeny Ia 50021
Tel: 1-800-345-0327
Web : www.spalusa.com
Lastly the part number for the fan is VA37-A101-46A
its a 5.2" 12 volt fan
foot note for future reference, they wont take orders via phone , but on their secured site....
Rod
 
I note that you celected "engine ice" over the Castrol coolant, saying the Castrol was weaker of the two. What makes the Engine Ice better? I assume you researched the coolant and had a reason to use this brand over the OEM recommended brand. I am just asking because I like to run the best in any engine additive such as lubes coolants, brake fluid etc. in order to extend the life of the parts and to help insure dependability over the long run. Where did you find the engine ice at?

Thank you,
LR
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top