Why is My Honda Motorcycle Overheating?

Got a Honda motorcycle that’s overheating after the radiator fluid was changed? Is the cooling fan not coming on? You might have overlooked air getting into the cooling system.

Partzilla’s Honda motorcycle expert John Talley does live Q&As on our YouTube channel every Friday at 3pm Eastern. In this session, John answers a viewer’s question about a Honda CBR600 overheating after it had all of its fluids changed out.

Honda Motorcycle Overheating Problem

I took my CBR600RR into the shop to have all fluids changed and just do a once-over to make sure it’s ready for the next riding season. It overheated 4 miles from the shop. I put a new battery in it and got it home. I started it up today and as it got up to temp, then it died and the fan never came on. What am I looking at, and do I risk taking it back to the shop if I overlooked whatever issue it is?

John Talley: It sounds to me like when they changed out your radiator fluid, they didn’t purge the air out of it, so you’ve got a pretty severe air pocket in there. And that does two things. One, it’s going to make the machine overheat and two, if you’ve got an air pocket, the sensor that tells the fan to turn on is never coming up to temp either. So it’s a compounding problem, one, it’s overheating and two, the fan’s not even going to turn on to attempt to try to cool it down. I would say drain out the fluid and try it again. And I think I did the procedure [in one of our videos]. It may or may not have been on the 600 that we had some years ago, where I did a fluid change on it, but just make sure you get all the air out of it because evidently the shop failed to do it. 

Watch the video below to see how to do a coolant flush on a Honda motorcycle.

Want to see more live repair questions answered? See more motorcycle and ATV repair questions answered here.