Knackered stat? Just slightly....

[speedy231278]

At the weekend, I managed not to break the charging circuit again while attacking the stat housing. For as long as I can remember, the bike has taken ages to warm up in winter, quite a long time at other times of the year, and has also been running pretty warm lately. Ages ago I acquired a new genuine Honda stat on eBay for about half the current and outrageous RRP of £42, and was never brave enough to do anything with it until now. After breaking the charging circuit due to the corroded connections, the previous weekend was spent sorting that out, and as the bolts holding it to the engine felt like they were starting to round and I also had no housing to engine o-ring, I ordered said parts with a few other bits from DSS. Yes, new bolts are a luxury, but then they cost under £2.50 for the pair of them, and sod's law said one or both would self destruct if I didn't..... My hunch was that the stat was knackered, and stuck partly open. Having new bolts meant that the old ones came out happily, and once off and open, this is what I found:



The housing cover gasket came out easily and was solid as a rock, as all gaskets normally are. Even if I was into reusing them, it would likely have been too dodgy. I'm not so sure about the o-ring that goes between the housing and the engine. I've never seen anything this dead before, and I'm not quite sure if there was ever one in there since the last time it came off (before my time, so pre April 2003), or if someone had simply stuffed a ton of instant gasket in there and prayed! The black stuff was quite springy and soft, albeit rather gungy. Nice....!



Housing was generally filthy on the outside, but apart from the cosmetic side of things it was in perfect health,



Engine side of things showing even more gungy crap. You can also see I'm going to have fun with the carb rubber clamps in due course!



Safe to say this stat has seen better days.... lol

Anyway, I cleaned up all the mating surfaces, and found a nice soft wire brush to clean all the white aluminium corrosion off of the castings and they came up reasonably. I also removed and polished up the temperature transducer for good measure. New seals all round, and a not too overenthusiastic smear of instant gasket just for good measure. Now the bike warms up much more quickly, runs a littler warmer (but not too warm) in cool conditions, and while I deliberately arranged my test run so it would warm up and then spend ages trundling about in baking heat like a few weeks back when it got silly hot, it didn't reach quite the extreme temperature that it did before. I'd still like it to run a little cooler for a little longer when things start getting hot, but it might be that the rads need cleaning yet again.