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G'day Guys!
I had a 40km ride in the scrub on my 1997 KDX200 today, only to be cut short by over heating problems (my mate on a KTM ended up riding back to the ute to come back & pick my sorry ass up, buy lots of beer, etc, etc)

I look to be losing water from the bottom of the casing, near the water pump. Is this where a drain plug of sorts has fallen out or is this a tell-tail for when the water pump is not so good any more?

I will try & upload a photo for you to look at but please be pre-warned that I am really crap at this kind of thing....

Did the drain plug fall out? I dunno, is it still there?

Highlighted area shows where liquid is coming out of.

This is the hardest I have ridden the beast so unsure if a drain plug has fallen out as it was not done up tight enough, or whether, as my mate suggested, it is a tell-tale for a broken water pump ????

Any links to KDX engine drawings would be greatly appreciated!!!!

Thanks very much for taking the time to look at my post!!!!!!!!

pretty sure the plug is that hex head, your leak might be a hole in the case? or leaky gasket? how much did you lose? how long did it take to lose that much?

it might be the water pump mechanical seal failure. Got similar problem but after changing the seal, no leak anymore.

It tunrs out to be a tell-tail & it has no thread
Mine was leaking because the impeller nut had come loose.
(I took the cover off & saw the impeller was spinning about on the shaft. I tightened up the 10mm nut on the impellor shaft & put it all back together)

After topping up with fresh coolant I kicked her over.
Coolant came streaming out of a split in the lid of my reservoir/overflow bottle.
I turned her off & took the lid off the bottle.
After starting again coolant gushed out of the reservoir bottle like a volcano.

????? Is this normal and only shown because my bottle is in poor condition & not holding the pressure or flow ?????

...or does this show thet my head gasket may be knackered due to running at such high temps on the last epic ride????

THX for taking the time to read this post!!!

That is a tell-tale hole used to detect a leaky water pump seal.
The hex next to it is the coolant drain.

Hopefully you just ran it hot and blew the head gasket. These motors are pretty durable. Are you set up to do a leak down test? What happens if you run it without the radiator cap?

Cheers Karl!
I will check running with the cap off. No, I'm not set up to do a leak test, but I can get the bike to a shop easily enough.
Is the head gasket fairly straight forward to replace, i.e without any special tools required?
The bike ran the last mile really warm, with engine racing, controlled only by resistance of driving the back wheel...

The bike ran the last mile really warm, with engine racing, controlled only by resistance of driving the back wheel...

Well, you got to get home, eh?

The head gasket is an easy job-
Tank and seat off, brush off the hanging mud, radiator hose and plug wire, 5 nuts
Tourque nuts to the correct number, run it until it is warm, re-torque.

There may be more to all this....

Wow, even a boof-head like me could do that! Thank you for your help Karl!

So I have the exact same issue on a 2002 KDX 220, water is dripping from the this hole. Can anyone tell me which part is likely failing in there? Is it the water seal, part number 49063 on this drawing: http://www.partzilla.com/parts/search/K ... parts.html

Cheers.

Fieldie wrote:

Highlighted area shows where liquid is coming out of.

This is the hardest I have ridden the beast so unsure if a drain plug has fallen out as it was not done up tight enough, or whether, as my mate suggested, it is a tell-tale for a broken water pump ????

Any links to KDX engine drawings would be greatly appreciated!!!!

Thanks very much for taking the time to look at my post!!!!!!!!

I have a post on here about pn#s to do the water pump seals. The parts diagram is very confusing. There are 5 parts that you need to do the whole thing. Replace the bearing, don't screw around, the case is apart, get it all done.

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