my 98 sportsman 500 has a lot of smoke coming from the radiator cap after she has only been running for a short 5 minutes and the tempature is about 20 degrees outside. The machine runs and drives fine and the temp light doesnt come nor does the fan because well I dont think the engine is getting hot enough. No smoke out the tailpipe either...just a lot of steam/smoke from the radiator and both the resivour and jug to the side are both full. Should I be concerned?

 

must be steam you mean. if it was over heating the light would come on and the coolant would be spitting out the resivour. does it have moisture built up from condersation around? it would heat up and steam off. does it continue to steam or does it stop after a short period of time?

 

Check the seams where the tank on the radiator meets the fin section. I've seen several that leak there and they blow steam intermittently. They don't over heat and don't lose much coolant but they will steam pretty heavily at times.

If you see some problems there I'd start looking for a radiator just to have as back-up in case the current one craps out totally.

 

You may just need a new rad cap. They do quit working properly after awhile.

 

yea i think they could lose thier pressure holding ability. cant remeber for sure what the cap is rated for maybe one of these guys do. it might be worth replacing the cap if its having blow by.

 

thanks for the insight...I will try with the cap first..cant hurt....here is now my other issue...recently I had no spark so I was able to get a used stator off ebay and that fixed my no spark issue and it starts and runs fine....however I am only getting about 25% power out of her at full throttle!! It doesnt backfire or stall or anything and even idles fine...just no power???? any thoughts on that?

 

not sure about the timing or air gap on that but i wonder if its set corretly?

 

had a buddy just but an 01 500 and his was spitting water out of his cap we were told if there is any air in system it wouldn't run right so he bought a cap ($28) and found out the the filler neck was also streched out ($17) if you have ever ran it hot you might want to check that as for your throttle chek the setting was the cable you could of knocked it out of adjustment