The story of a not so good weekend with the P650
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05-20-2003, 08:44 PM
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The story of a not so good weekend with the P650
Hey everyone, sorry about the long post, but it's quite interesting LOL!!!!
Well I made it back from the ATV Jamboree in Woodstock, New Brunswick this weekend. I guess I have mix feeling about the whole weekend. Saturday was a pretty good day until the end of the trip, Sunday was a really bad day, and Monday was an awesome day.
Let me start on Saturday morning. This was when they had the ATV parade. As some of you know, they where attempting to set a world record for the most number of ATV in a parade. They where expecting around 2500 ATV's. As you can see from this pic, only about 850 ATV's showed up.
Bikes before the parade
Once the parade was finished, we took off on the first run of the weekend. The trail started out OK. There was a couple of nice mud & water holes. Got a chance to test out the Mudlites and got the bike dirty.
Bike after first mud hole
Then the rest of the day was all downhill. First we started ridding these trails that where really really dusty, when we finally started getting into some mud, it wasn't very good. It was thick soupy mud that was about 6 inches deep. There wasn't any water anywhere, just this weird sandy thick mud. As you can imagine, this was hell on all the liquid cool bikes since the mud was getting into the radiators, and there was no water to be found to wash out the radiators. Once we got out of the mud, we would hit dusty trails again, and this would allow the mud to dry nicely on the radiator and guard. Then we would hit more of the same kind of mud, then more dusty trails. No water holes to be found. It was like this for pretty much the rest of the trip. We had 3 P650 in our group and just before we got to the halfway point of our 80km run, all our heat lights started coming on. Finally when we got to the halfway point of the ride, we finally found a nice cold running river, but we where not allowed to go into it to wash off our bikes. They had it all blocked off. So we walked over to the river with a couple of water bottles and tried washing our rads as best as we could.
We then left to try and complete the run. We drove about 5 minutes and the heat lights came on again on all 3 P650. We drove a bit, stopped, let the bikes cool down, drove a bit, stopped. Did this pretty much for the rest of the trip. Of course during this time, we are still running either dusty, or muddy trails without any water holes. About an hour after the halfway point, my friend John on his new Polaris 600 overheated. White puff of smoke and prestone everywhere. This is what his rad looked liked when he overheated.
John's rad
This is what the front of my bike looked like when John overheated. Little did I know the fun was yet to come.
My bike when John overheated
Everytime we stopped I tried to clean the rad with my hand. But you can only do so much without water. So me, another guy on a Prairie 360, and John's wife on a Sportsman 400 decided to stay back with John to pull him back to the end of the run. The rest of the guys kept on going. So we took our time going back and stopped when my heat light would come on. Let the bike cool down, then kept on going. About 2km's before the end of the run, guess what. Big puff of white smoke, and prestone all over my right floor board. Yes the all mighty P650 had given up on me. So I got towed back to the end of run by a Polaris. What a painfull experience for myself. My pride took a big hit until I seen something weird on the side of the trail. It looked like someone was having a fire on the side of the trail but for some reason, they wouldn't let anyone pass.
Fire on side on the trail
When they finally let us go by, this is what we seen.
Roasted Polaris 700
What you are seeing is what's left of a day old Polaris 700. I guess my overheating problems where minor compared to this guy.
Well we finally got my bike and John's to the finish line. Here is a pic of the 2 wounded bikes.
Wounded bikes
So I called my buddy Chris and asked him to take my truck with my trailer and to come and pickup the 2 bikes. He then tells me, my P650, and Mark's P650 did the same thing also.
After getting the bike cleaned off, I found the problem with my bike. The little plastic container on the right side of the bike just bellow the plunger had completly melted and this is what caused the prestone to come out. This container is called a water filter.
This is what the whole unit looks like, the left side of the plastic where the little hose connects is all melted, and the inside of the container is all melted also. Mark's P650 did the same thing as mine. On Chris's P650, it melted a little hole in the filter which allowed the prestone to leak out.
Melted Plastic container
On Sunday, I drove to Houlton, Maine and got a piece of hose to replace the whole unit. By the time I got back and fixed the bike, it was too late to go on the Sunday run. So I spent about $12 at the pressure washer cleaning out my rad.
So Monday I got to try out my temporary fix and the bike worked fine. Did 80km's in some awesome trails. We had a blast. Thank god, since this made up for Saturday and Sunday.
On Monday's run, I spoke to the local Kawasaki dealer and he told me that Saturday night he was at his shop fixing seven overheated P650. They where all doing the same thing. The best part about the whole ordeal is that one of the Kawasaki rep was on the run Saturday, and his bike overheated also. He told me that every P650 he seen that day where overheating. He only seen one that didn't have any problems, and the only reason he didn't have problems was because the owner connected the cooling fan directly so that it would always run.
I also talked to a guy from the Moncton Kawasaki Dealer and his demo P650 also did this. I talked to one of my friend, and they had 2 Honda Rincon 650, and they both overheated also. So overall, it seems like it wasn't a good day for any of the big utility quads. I know of 12 P650 that overheated on Saturday. Not a good showing for Kawasaki.
So this was my weekend in a nutshell, I will be uploading all the pics to my site soon.
Well I made it back from the ATV Jamboree in Woodstock, New Brunswick this weekend. I guess I have mix feeling about the whole weekend. Saturday was a pretty good day until the end of the trip, Sunday was a really bad day, and Monday was an awesome day.
Let me start on Saturday morning. This was when they had the ATV parade. As some of you know, they where attempting to set a world record for the most number of ATV in a parade. They where expecting around 2500 ATV's. As you can see from this pic, only about 850 ATV's showed up.
Bikes before the parade
Once the parade was finished, we took off on the first run of the weekend. The trail started out OK. There was a couple of nice mud & water holes. Got a chance to test out the Mudlites and got the bike dirty.
Bike after first mud hole
Then the rest of the day was all downhill. First we started ridding these trails that where really really dusty, when we finally started getting into some mud, it wasn't very good. It was thick soupy mud that was about 6 inches deep. There wasn't any water anywhere, just this weird sandy thick mud. As you can imagine, this was hell on all the liquid cool bikes since the mud was getting into the radiators, and there was no water to be found to wash out the radiators. Once we got out of the mud, we would hit dusty trails again, and this would allow the mud to dry nicely on the radiator and guard. Then we would hit more of the same kind of mud, then more dusty trails. No water holes to be found. It was like this for pretty much the rest of the trip. We had 3 P650 in our group and just before we got to the halfway point of our 80km run, all our heat lights started coming on. Finally when we got to the halfway point of the ride, we finally found a nice cold running river, but we where not allowed to go into it to wash off our bikes. They had it all blocked off. So we walked over to the river with a couple of water bottles and tried washing our rads as best as we could.
We then left to try and complete the run. We drove about 5 minutes and the heat lights came on again on all 3 P650. We drove a bit, stopped, let the bikes cool down, drove a bit, stopped. Did this pretty much for the rest of the trip. Of course during this time, we are still running either dusty, or muddy trails without any water holes. About an hour after the halfway point, my friend John on his new Polaris 600 overheated. White puff of smoke and prestone everywhere. This is what his rad looked liked when he overheated.
John's rad
This is what the front of my bike looked like when John overheated. Little did I know the fun was yet to come.
My bike when John overheated
Everytime we stopped I tried to clean the rad with my hand. But you can only do so much without water. So me, another guy on a Prairie 360, and John's wife on a Sportsman 400 decided to stay back with John to pull him back to the end of the run. The rest of the guys kept on going. So we took our time going back and stopped when my heat light would come on. Let the bike cool down, then kept on going. About 2km's before the end of the run, guess what. Big puff of white smoke, and prestone all over my right floor board. Yes the all mighty P650 had given up on me. So I got towed back to the end of run by a Polaris. What a painfull experience for myself. My pride took a big hit until I seen something weird on the side of the trail. It looked like someone was having a fire on the side of the trail but for some reason, they wouldn't let anyone pass.
Fire on side on the trail
When they finally let us go by, this is what we seen.
Roasted Polaris 700
What you are seeing is what's left of a day old Polaris 700. I guess my overheating problems where minor compared to this guy.
Well we finally got my bike and John's to the finish line. Here is a pic of the 2 wounded bikes.
Wounded bikes
So I called my buddy Chris and asked him to take my truck with my trailer and to come and pickup the 2 bikes. He then tells me, my P650, and Mark's P650 did the same thing also.
After getting the bike cleaned off, I found the problem with my bike. The little plastic container on the right side of the bike just bellow the plunger had completly melted and this is what caused the prestone to come out. This container is called a water filter.
This is what the whole unit looks like, the left side of the plastic where the little hose connects is all melted, and the inside of the container is all melted also. Mark's P650 did the same thing as mine. On Chris's P650, it melted a little hole in the filter which allowed the prestone to leak out.
Melted Plastic container
On Sunday, I drove to Houlton, Maine and got a piece of hose to replace the whole unit. By the time I got back and fixed the bike, it was too late to go on the Sunday run. So I spent about $12 at the pressure washer cleaning out my rad.
So Monday I got to try out my temporary fix and the bike worked fine. Did 80km's in some awesome trails. We had a blast. Thank god, since this made up for Saturday and Sunday.
On Monday's run, I spoke to the local Kawasaki dealer and he told me that Saturday night he was at his shop fixing seven overheated P650. They where all doing the same thing. The best part about the whole ordeal is that one of the Kawasaki rep was on the run Saturday, and his bike overheated also. He told me that every P650 he seen that day where overheating. He only seen one that didn't have any problems, and the only reason he didn't have problems was because the owner connected the cooling fan directly so that it would always run.
I also talked to a guy from the Moncton Kawasaki Dealer and his demo P650 also did this. I talked to one of my friend, and they had 2 Honda Rincon 650, and they both overheated also. So overall, it seems like it wasn't a good day for any of the big utility quads. I know of 12 P650 that overheated on Saturday. Not a good showing for Kawasaki.
So this was my weekend in a nutshell, I will be uploading all the pics to my site soon.
#2
05-20-2003, 09:01 PM
#3
05-20-2003, 09:26 PM
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The story of a not so good weekend with the P650
2003650
When the 700 burnt, we where only about 1 km from the end of the run. So he didn't have far to go. But I'm sure someone gave him a ride. My buddy took a video of them hauling the bike off the trail and he almost runs over the rims. Then you see the guy walking on the side of the trail with his seat in his hand. Only thing left off his bike
When the 700 burnt, we where only about 1 km from the end of the run. So he didn't have far to go. But I'm sure someone gave him a ride. My buddy took a video of them hauling the bike off the trail and he almost runs over the rims. Then you see the guy walking on the side of the trail with his seat in his hand. Only thing left off his bike
#5
05-20-2003, 09:32 PM
The story of a not so good weekend with the P650
Great story, nice pics. Poor poor Polaris, I had quad burn to the ground when it was very new, it sucks. I hope he had insurance. To bad the Kawasaki's all over heated and went out of commission. I hope the rep will take the information back to the engineers and show them what went wrong. They should make an improvement on the design for '04s hopefully.
I can't wait to see your other pics, I'm looking at your old ones now. I love looking at your camo P650, it looks just like mine...hehe. Makes me want to go ride.
I can't wait to see your other pics, I'm looking at your old ones now. I love looking at your camo P650, it looks just like mine...hehe. Makes me want to go ride.
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05-20-2003, 09:43 PM
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#7
05-20-2003, 09:47 PM
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05-20-2003, 09:48 PM
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The story of a not so good weekend with the P650
bbertram
When I talked to the local Kawi dealer, he told me that the rep was pissed off and that as soon as he got back to work on Tuesday, he was going to complain. He was pretty pissed off I guess.
I have over 500 pics and only 5MB of web space. I have to find the best ones and post them on my site. I've got some really good pictures and videos so it will be hard to choose.
Oh yeah on a positive note, the Mudlites where awesome all weekend. Never got stuck ones and stayed in 2x4 pretty much all the time.
When I talked to the local Kawi dealer, he told me that the rep was pissed off and that as soon as he got back to work on Tuesday, he was going to complain. He was pretty pissed off I guess.
I have over 500 pics and only 5MB of web space. I have to find the best ones and post them on my site. I've got some really good pictures and videos so it will be hard to choose.
Oh yeah on a positive note, the Mudlites where awesome all weekend. Never got stuck ones and stayed in 2x4 pretty much all the time.
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05-20-2003, 09:49 PM
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#10
05-20-2003, 09:52 PM
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The story of a not so good weekend with the P650
Oh yeah one more thing I forgot to mention. I was about 32 degree on Saturday so that didn't help either.
Also if anyone wants to see the video of the Polaris burning, I can send it to you on MSN Messenger or ICQ. It's 17MB big, so you will need high speed internet. Just look me up under kawi_dan@hotmail.com or ICQ # 54543917
Also if anyone wants to see the video of the Polaris burning, I can send it to you on MSN Messenger or ICQ. It's 17MB big, so you will need high speed internet. Just look me up under kawi_dan@hotmail.com or ICQ # 54543917