Radiator fitting snapped as I'm a twat

[Aegis Bearing Mel]

Right, I'm officially the unluckiest and clumsiest foccer in the world.

Riding 'Bee to work, heated grip comes away from the throttle tube so she becomes unrideable.
Park up, get a lift to work and head back to pick her up that night on the back of my ute.
Turns out I forgot to turn off the ignition so her battery is flat as an anorexic's chest.

After this I couldn't be arsed unloading her at night, so left it until the morning.

Unloading her from the bed of the ute and one ramp slips off as I hadn't tied the ramps properly.
Half way down, the second ramp slips off and my lovely, shiny bike bounces off the ramp, off the back of the ute and ends up front wheel on the tailgate with the back on the driveway.


After the coolant tsunami had abated, I pushed her into the carport and headed to work.

When I checked the radiator core seems sound, but the coolant intake pipe on the bottom right of the radiator (as you sit on the bike) has come away from the radiator half way around, the other half is still attached.


My plan is to braze/solder it with these wee fellas and a wee blow torch, anyone have any experience with soldering radiators?


Any hints/tips/do's or dont's to be aware of?

[Fazerider]

I've brazed aluminium with those zinc alloy rods and it's quite tricky. The ally starts to soften quite near to the melting point of the rod. If you're using one of those micro jet type burners with a tiny high temperature flame on thin metal it's easy to overheat and burn a hole through before you've got enough heat into the area to melt the rod. I've not tried with a hot air gun, but it may be that it would work better… plenty of heat, but not such a high temperature.
Practice on some empty beer cans first. and if that looks as if it's going the same way as the start of this sorry saga, take the rad to a specialist. :lol

[AyJay]

It's all radiators at the moment on the forum!

I've repaired the lugs on my rad with Technoweld and if you get it right the results are excellent and they'll last.

http://www.techno-weld.co.uk/home.html
I did the last repair 60k miles ago and it's still solid. There's a few vids on youtube which you could watch first.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nxtmt6QC...E785F5B696
The trick is to get a large enough area around the repair on the radiator up to weld temp, so strip it down and use a blow lamp. The little micro jet burners don't get enough of the piece hot enough. You don't just heat the area to be welded, it has to be the a large area around the piece.

As Fazerider said, it can be tricky though. Once it's up to temp, the weld happens very quickly but the useful thing is if you get it wrong, you just heat the area up and the tehcnoweld melts and you can try again. I found the hard bit was making sure the lug was positioned correctly as the weld was made, because juggling the blowtorch, the rod, the scraper and the part is not easy.

[PaulSmith]

Step away from the bike and give the rad to a pro to fix. If you are only half as clumsy and half arsed as you claim, then you know already that you will only foc it up further if you attempt to repair it yourself.

[Nightfury]

I would take it to a specialist myself. Not necessarily a rad specialist, an engineering shop or something. The last thing I would want is the rad to dump loads of nice slippery antifreeze under my rear tyre mid way through a corner!

[b1k3rdude]

Step away from the bike and give the rad to a pro to fix.

+1

I recommend John (john (at) laserweldingservices.co.uk) as he managed to weld a cracked float bowl, which is impressive as 1. its monkey metal and 2. is was barely 2mm thick.

[mickvp]

^^ thats a nice bit of welding there. impressive