hello fellow duners, i have to post this ,,, my 03 ds racer was acting straannggeee last week, the fan would come on when the engine was cold buuuzzzzz , then stay on ,, i thought mabe stuck fan switch ,,,,,,well the fan eventualy turned off after a few shut downs ,,, here is where it gets good stay with me ,,,,,friday i rejetted from stock 165 to 175 cleaned kn air filter and bought new outerwear oh and got new needle the dealer service guy says it makes the bike rev faster , and yes now the bike revs quicker and has more power , oh forgot i have hmf slip on pipe and kn setup thats it, well after this we go to the dunes ,,,,,with me so far ?? goood!!! well after riding hard and just cruizing the little red light came on,,,,while driving back to camp says on , i shut my machine down let it sit for a minute for oil to go back into tank ,to check the oil , oh guys carry a little flashlight with ya a lettle led key chain one it helps , ok oil level good fresh oil change , check coolant bottle green means good,, i put my hand on the coolant hose i count 1234 to hot to handle , ok my policy is if you v=can squezze the radiator hose and hold it for 5 seconds your not in that bad of shape ,,well i let the bike set for 10 minutes , start it back up light comes on when in run not running thats ok start the machine light goes out yea yea !!! im back in business i make it back to camp ,light stays out for the remainder of the trip to camp ,,,,stay with me ill get to my point your honor,,,call the next witness ,ok back at the camp i do some checks ,, and yes i am mechanicly inclined , not a pro but not rock stupid ,, i check fliuds on the bike oil ok , coolant fine at the bottle and at the radiator neck ,,,now whats missing folks .......radiator fan ,,,,,i run the bike till it warms up its now getting hot again no fan turn on ,,,,,please turn on please turn on mr fan ,, no fan yet ,now without a book here i look for the fan turn on switch , wich is the 2 wire one glued into the thermsate housing , i gently pulled back the wires and touched them togethor with a screwdriver walaaahhh the fan is running its alive!!!! but when i break the connection the fan dies ,, wich tells me the fan motor is working ,, my only option is the fan switch is not working properly, i will order a new fans witch today and hope this stops the overheating ,, you think thats it huh ,,,,,wrong !!!the next day the light never came on and the fan was running again with proper turn and turn off , with out changing the fan switch , i think the fan switch is still goofed and will defintly under any circumstances change it out ,, if anyone else has had this problem please let me know what you did and what the outcome was thanx guys randy

 

I'm knocking on wood right now. (Thankfully, haven't had the problem.)

A number of people have just taken the automatic switch out of the loop and put a manual switch on their dash. When they ride hard, in heat or they climb a lot of dunes, they just turn it on and let it run.

It would probably be real easy to mount a small switch and wire it down to the temperature switch area. You could still operate off the switch but, if you continue to have problems, don't let it kill your trip. By-pass the switch and connect to your manual switch and turn the fan on.

The only thing that has me wondering is that if your coolant isn't that hot in the first place (your hold your hand on and count test) than it almost seems like it isn't the fan that's the issue??? What I'm saying is your radiator is working if your coolant is cooling down (and you can hold the hose easily) so, it doesn't need the fan to help?

 

1) radiator Shrouds
2) new thermostat
3) water wetter
4) new radiator switch
5) make sure oil screen in oil-tank in cleaned!!! the red light is also an OIL light.






Bigger.

 

Exact same thing happened on my 02 right down to working fine the next time out. I put an on-off toggle in my dash wired into the fan switch so if it does get hot again I can run the fan manually, so far no problems.