[Peachmonkey]

Hello all. New here so let me start off with what is probably a silly one. I'm curious to see if anyone else has experience and/or opinion with an issue I'm having.
I have a 2016 Commander XT 1000 with only about 600 miles on it. I live in snow country so most of this machine's life thus far has been pushing snow.
I bought it used with 300 miles on it. I found that whoever worked on it before I got it screwed up a couple things that I believe caused it to leak coolant at the rad cap:

• Factory radiator cap inside sealing surface was torn up so it was prone to leaking around the cap.
• Radiator overflow tube leading to overflow reservoir was misrouted and kinked badly where it connects at the radiator fill neck.

So (here's the meat of my question) I bought online one of these 1.8 bar (25.6 psi) radiator caps with the cute little temperature gauge on it thinking it would fix the leaking, which it did for most of this winter. Last time I put the machine away after plowing snow I later found the shop floor under the machine covered with maybe a couple quarts of antifreeze. I opened things up to find that the coolant appears to have come from the water pump weep tube. This leads me to wonder if this higher pressure radiator cap (combined with the kinked overflow tube??) blew out the water pump seal. I think the factory rad caps are set to piddle at around 15 psi. With only 600 miles on this thing it's the only explanation I can think of. I have refilled the radiator and I see nothing leaking, but I have not run the machine yet. I suspect when it warms up and things start flowing it will repeat the raining coolant show...
Thoughts?

 

[acefire]

If your lucky it didn’t blow it completely out. But I would say it’s short lived now. Definitely replaced the fill cap with a factory pressure cap. And hope for the best .

 

[Peachmonkey]

If your lucky it didn’t blow it completely out. But I would say it’s short lived now. Definitely replaced the fill cap with a factory pressure cap. And hope for the best .

Thanks Ace.
I have had it parked for a week with a catch bowl under that weep tube and it's dripping so I think I popped that seal. I have fixed the kinked overflow hose and bought a replacement kit for the coolant and oil seals. I'll swap those out and put a 1.1 bar factory radiator cap back on it. Hopefully that settles it. Spring's coming...

 

[Troy]

Any updates ?


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[Peachmonkey]

Any updates ?


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Nothing new yet. The slow drip continues. I've been sick all weekend and now have a busy work week ahead. Replacement rad cap is on the way still anyway.
I'll post what I find and anything interesting I find during "surgery" when I can tear into it...

 

[Peachmonkey]

OK. After what has been an obviously ridiculous amount of time I have a report. I finally got freed up to tear into it and I can report that after replacing the water and oil seal under the water pump (no picnic by the way), rerouting the radiator overflow hose so it's not kinked, and replacing the radiator cap with a 1.1 bar cap, all seems to be happy. After pushing snow (for the 784th time this winter...) and running it for about an hour, no more pump weep tube drips. Temperature seems to behave itself, fanning at 5 bars and cooling back to 2 like as before. So far so good...
One thing I find a little curious - I was having nightmares about burping this thing correctly on coolant refill. I was prepared to jack up the front and the whole bit but ended up not needing to. I used the bleeder screws atop each head, and used the AWESOME radiator funnel that some genius came up with that I got on Amazon (this thing. Not sure how I lived without one of those until now.) Anyway, I ran it until fan, watched the bubbles gurgle, shut it off to see some more bubbles. Dumped the rest in the overflow bucket, Capped it and ran it today and all seems good. Am I missing something?