Why is My Honda Goldwing Overheating?

After the cooling system has been worked on, including changing out the thermostat and the water pump, what else could be causing a Honda Goldwing with two radiators to overheat?

Partzilla’s Honda motorcycle expert John Talley hosts live Q&A sessions on our YouTube channel every Friday at 3pm Eastern. In this session, John was asked what could be causing a 20-year-old Honda Goldwing motorcycle to overheat after some cooling system repairs had be done.

Honda Goldwing Overheating Q&A

My 2003 Honda Goldwing is overheating. I have changed thermostat, water pump and water temp sensor and no leaks. The fans work, and the ECM was reset. What can be the next big thing?

John Talley: Alright, you’re dealing with an 03, so she is 20 years old. I would think you’re going to need to do a radiator flush on it, or a clean and a flush, and we did one on a Kawasaki KLR 650. And we used a chemical I think from Peak to where we filled it up, let it sit and then flushed it out. It sounds like your radiator may be a little bit stopped up. So I would do that first. Now, if she’s still overheating after you put it back together, then go ahead and do a pressure test on the system just to make sure you don’t have the beginnings of any type of head gasket failure, which sometimes can manifest itself in an overheating issue. Because it’ll actually blow exhaust gases into the radiator or into the cooling system and then overheats it. But anyway, I think you might have stopped up radiators because there’s two on the Goldwing. So I would say do a flush, and then see what she does next. And if it still doesn’t, well, you’ll probably have a lot of crap coming out of there, but if it’s still looking rough, you may want to consider replacement radiators, especially given that they’re 20 years old. If you don’t go through your radiator flush, or at least replace the fluid I think every three or five years, you start to get a bunch of buildup in there and then eventually it chokes it down. That may be what’s happening to yours. 

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

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

Watch the video below to see how to do a coolant change on a Suzuki motorcycle.

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