I am getting ready to put my top end back together on my 1999 Sport 400L this weekend. Have a few questions. 1) How the heck do you torque the bolts back to spec on the lower cylinder? Had hard time getting them off w/a wrench!

2) I know this may sound dumb, but is the coolant system need to be under pressure? If so, how do I pressurize the system? Once I get it started back up, do I bleed the system or what? What is it that I should know regarding the coolant? Is it as simple as putting the hoses back on, filling w/a 50/50 mix to the correct level? Sorry for the dumb one, but I had to ask.

Thanks for the replies.

 

You will have to bleed the system. Your manual will have a procedure to follow. As for the lower base nuts Dennis Kirk carrys an extension that is attached to the torque wrench allowing you to torque the base nuts correctly. Jay

 

Use a crows foot socket attatchment and/or this tool from Dennis kirk. Torque wrench adapter. My local mechanic let me borrow his for a couple of hours plus my dealer stocks that tool. I used the crow foot after I had the inner clutch cover back on. It helped reach that bas bolt.

 

Tech tip. If you use that wrench tool you will need to keep the torque wrench at 90 degrees to it. This tranfers the torque correctly. Any thing off of 90 will require some calculations to determine the correct torque.

 

Though what the other guys were saying is THE correct way, this is one area where "calculated" torque of your good judgement can get you buy. Just using a combination wrench to get them a bit at a time. The most important step comes onece the machine has been warmed up good for it's first time. The sealing ring on the gasket will compress, hence possibly loosening the tension. You'll need to go back over and re-tighten the base.

There is a bleed screw on the stock head by the temp sensor. You can back this out to bleed the entrapped air from the system. If you're using one of the aftermarket heads, you can just back out the temp sensor itself til you get a stream of coolant coming out.

Have you considered running Redline's Water Wetter as your coolant. You'll need to flush your system out, then mixt 4oz/gallon of distilled water. Running this, you can actually do away with your cooling fan. One not, come fall, get some anti-freeze back in, cause it doesn't have anti-freeze protection. [img]i/expressions/face-icon-small-smile.gif[/img]