[BMHS]

Guys,
During my performance testing of my new 400 engine, I have had the water temperature probed at the outlet of the head, pictures in an other thread. The last couple of day when I have beens test running the engine, I have kept an eye on both the dash water temp bar gage, and the water outlet temps on my probe.
Data to date.
3 bars showing - up to 184 degrees F.
4 bars showing - over 185 degrees F.
I'll do a riding bike test to see where the change is from 4 bars to 5 bars is, after it warms up a bit here in Wisconsin.
Brian

 

[sbk1198]

Guys,
During my performance testing of my new 400 engine, I have had the water temperature probed at the outlet of the head, pictures in an other thread. The last couple of day when I have beens test running the engine, I have kept an eye on both the dash water temp bar gage, and the water outlet temps on my probe.
Data to date.
3 bars showing - up to 184 degrees F.
4 bars showing - over 185 degrees F.
I'll do a riding bike test to see where the change is from 4 bars to 5 bars is, after it warms up a bit here in Wisconsin.
Brian

Why are you re-inventing the wheel? Did you not see my post in your other thread about engine temps where I gave you the numbers for what 3, 4, 5, and 6 bars represent?

 

[BMHS]

sbk1198,
I fail to see the big deal. God forbid, I missed your comment on the other thread, sorry.
It will never happen again.
Brian

 

[JFMNINJA400]

Why are you re-inventing the wheel? Did you not see my post in your other thread about engine temps where I gave you the numbers for what 3, 4, 5, and 6 bars represent?

I keep this on my phone, it’s good info too have!!! I was always curious what the 3, 4 and 5 meant in actual temps. Thanks again Alex!!! 👍🏽👍🏽👍🏽

 

[sbk1198]

sbk1198,
I fail to see the big deal. God forbid, I missed your comment on the other thread, sorry.
It will never happen again.
Brian

It's not a big deal, I just don't get your process/logic. You start a thread, ask something in it, someone answers it with the data you're looking for, you ignore it, then you do all the work to find it yourself, and then you start a new thread where you post the same thing that's already been posted before "Internetting" isn't all that hard lol But if you want to repeat stuff, so be it I guess.

 

[BMHS]

I find that your small core of super users, who spend a ton of time on the site, look at old threads. Newer users do not seem to do the same, hence the need for new threats.
Also, I don't know if other data is the same as mine, which was water out, not cooled by the radiator.
Sorry for the confusion
Brian

 

[falcn]

Water out?

 

[BMHS]

Sorry for being encriptic. There are two places that you can measure water temperature, cooled water after the radiator, hotter water as it leaves the engine at the top of the cylinder head. I wanted to see how hot the water gets. In the future, my second set of data will be temperatures after the radiator. I'm doing some engineering work for a couple of MotoAmerica Junior Cup teams. I want to see if it's really necessary to mount a secondary radiator below the OEM unit. Some teams have them, and some teams don't. The radiator cost about $800.00, so it's worth getting the data first.
Brian
SRDLLC

 

[InvisiBill]

I'm actually curious how the temps at your sensor (on the radiator side of the thermostat) compare to the temps at the stock sensor in the head.

These little Ninjas have a single loop cooling system where cooling is controlled by limiting flow through the radiator (and therefore the rest of the loop too). The 400 has the stat mounted right on the engine like the KLR, which had enough issues with the cooling system to inspire the creation of the Thermo-Bob. The other little Ninjas use a remote housing for the thermostat and temp sender, but are known for running quite cold due to the lack of flow before the stat opens. I'd like to see how much the temperature varies between the sensor in the head and at the thermostat, to get a better idea of how much the lack of flow affects the 400.

 

[misnblu]

I'm actually curious how the temps at your sensor (on the radiator side of the thermostat) compare to the temps at the stock sensor in the head.

These little Ninjas have a single loop cooling system where cooling is controlled by limiting flow through the radiator (and therefore the rest of the loop too). The 400 has the stat mounted right on the engine like the KLR, which had enough issues with the cooling system to inspire the creation of the Thermo-Bob. The other little Ninjas use a remote housing for the thermostat and temp sender, but are known for running quite cold due to the lack of flow before the stat opens. I'd like to see how much the temperature varies between the sensor in the head and at the thermostat, to get a better idea of how much the lack of flow affects the 400.

That's why I got a high flow radiator from a company out of Florida.
Living here in the Gulf Coast of MS it gets and stays hot for many months so this high flow unit should help with keeping the temps at a more normal level when at stop lights etc.

 

[sbk1198]

That's why I got a high flow radiator from a company out of Florida.
Living here in the Gulf Coast of MS it gets and stays hot for many months so this high flow unit should help with keeping the temps at a more normal level when at stop lights etc.

View attachment 27776 View attachment 27777

What makes it "high flow"? Because it looks pretty much the same as the stock as far as size and overall design goes.

 

[misnblu]

What makes it "high flow"? Because it looks pretty much the same as the stock as far as size and overall design goes.

If you look at the rows of the radiators you'll see the stock has more than the aftermarket.
40% more flow rate than stock and this company is a legit racing oriented company making radiators for a few models.

Exotic Motorsports out of Florida I believe is the company.
When testing it after the install I let the bike idle for at least 20 minutes with an occasional rev and the temp never got above 4. Fan came on twice during that time which surprised me with the 4 bars.

I'll be doing plenty of riding in about a week weather cooperating and will assuredly have a better evaluation of this high flow unit. 👍

 

[kpier883]

I don't know much about cooling systems. Nor am I an engineer. But I have some questions...

Based on the pictures, OEM has 25 crossflows between the tanks. Aftermarket has 14 19 (<edited), thanks for correction guys). I'd think the water would cool off more with 25 paths through the radiator.

 

[kpier883]

@BHMS,

I am very interested in learning from your experiments. Don't want to derail the conversation, but I am curious about the ability of the stock radiator to handle a significant horsepower increase. For example, would it cool an engine that has been modified with increased displacement (say... 421cc) and 13.5+ compression ratio. And the rev limiter bumped up say 500 RPM? Basically the mods offered by Spears, Danos, and others?

Would it live on the street? (I don't care)
Would it survive track days and non-endurance racing? ( I do care).

I'd suppose that a track with very long straights would build heat during those sections and need to bleed it off in the deceleration and speed maintenance areas of the track. So maybe it would overheat at Daytona, Road America, Road Atlanta but maybe be fine at Tally, Barber, Grattan etc.

Again, I look forward to hearing anything you can share as you learn from your development program.

 

[misnblu]

I don't know much about cooling systems. Nor am I an engineer. But I have some questions...

Based on the pictures, OEM has 25 crossflows between the tanks. Aftermarket has 14. I'd think the water would cool off more with 25 paths through the radiator.

Stock radiator has 25 row cooling.
Aftermarket radiator has 19.
I counted both.

I bought the aftermarket radiator for better flow and have done the research to make sure my decision was valid.

This radiator is better built to handle the higher pressure radiator cap I'm using but really isn't needed as the stock should handle it quite well.

With the 15% glycol coolant I'm using and recommended amount of Water Wetter and water the higher flow should do a better job in cooling the motor while also maintaining enough laminar flow to prevent steam cavitation under high loads like track days etc.

I'll have some better facts once I get the bike in the road to determine it's worth for better cooling or not.
Weather's looking hopeful for next week to ride so out of the 6 days home I'll have 3 of those with some seat time. Finally.

Knowing what the cooling of the bike was prior to the radiator swap will tell me any differences in how well my decision was for this swap.

Here's their website for the radiator.

New Kawasaki Ninja 400 Aluminum Super Cooling Radiator 2018-2021

Template By Froo! Suzuki GSXR 600 GSXR 750 Racing Super Cooling Radiator 2006-2009 Kawasaki Ninja 400 Racing Super Cooling Radiator 2018-2021 all models SCR Super Cooling Rads This radiators are heavy duty designed, Flow capacity is increased about 40% than standard radiator ,exceeds OEM...

exotic-motorsports.shop

 

[Flash Bantam]

Another cooling question since I'm here. Can the thermastat be changed in our 400 cc machines?

 

[sbk1198]

I don't know much about cooling systems. Nor am I an engineer. But I have some questions...

Based on the pictures, OEM has 25 crossflows between the tanks. Aftermarket has 14. I'd think the water would cool off more with 25 paths through the radiator.

That's a good observation...also by the looks of it the size is the same as OEM, so if the volume and area that the air flows over it are the same, then it can't be any better than the stock one. I think that's the same as all the radiators you can find on ebay. In fact if you just search for "ninja 400 radiator" on ebay, the first 2 that come up are that same one, but cheaper than on their website. Also that company looks to have a lot of products for sale...way more products than a small company that nobody has heard of can handle, but even if they can....if it's THEIR design and R&D as they mention on the website, wouldn't they want to put their logos on the products? None of the ones I clicked on, including brake rotors, have their logos on them. They have no logos at all, which is usually a strong indicator of being random chinese products. My guess is they buy a lot of stuff that other companies make from China and they sell them as their own. Even their description is full of grammatical and punctuation errors. Smells fishy to me....

With that said, I'm sure that radiator works just fine....cuz it's a radiator, not very hard to replicate. But I highly doubt it'll be better than stock. The difference that @misnblu will probably observe will be mainly from the coolant he's using. These bikes do tend to run a bit on the hot side. A normal temp for my bike (mild superbike motor build) was usually in the 190-200 degree range even on a cooler day. On hot days here in the south, where temp is over 90 with relatively high humidity, it wasn't uncommon to see 210-220. My zx6r on the other hand would be running around 175-190 on cooler days and 190-205 on those hot days. The best solution to improve cooling on the 400s is to get the Febur auxiliary radiator. We put one on our supersport race bike and it definitely lowered the temps by quite a bit, but I don't have exact numbers because unfortunately it got crashed during the 2nd race weekend after we put it on.

 

[sbk1198]

Another cooling question since I'm here. Can the thermastat be changed in our 400 cc machines?

A lot of racers and engine builders either drill bigger holes in it for more flow, or they remove it completely, that way it's always flowing 100% regardless of temperature.

 

[Teorist]

Pretty cool thread!

Ok, ok! I'm outta here!