The radiator on the Speed Triple has nothing between it and all the debris that is thrown up by the front tire. After only one year of riding, about 12,000 miles, the radiator was already looking worse for wear. Not only were all the small fins plugged with bugs and grit, the black paint had turned chalky, the center of the radiator, where most of the tire rubbish hits it was tattered and many of the fins had been bent and mashed over. At some point something big had impacted the radiator resulting in a huge snarf and a large silver crescent stretching over the left half of the radiator. Not only was this silver scrape ugly, but all this damage was compromising the cooling abilities of the radiator. Something needed to be done.
After spending the better half of an hour with a small flat-head screwdriver and a hand awl straightening and cleaning all the delicate fins I was inspired to have something in place before summer ride season began.
Interestingly, the oil cooler, which looks to be much more in harms way than the radiator, had survived the year without so much as a scuff. My assumption is that it's location off to the side had kept it from catching wheel fling.
The radiator was my primary concern. I'd decided on building my own screen to protect the delicate component. Expanded metal can be hard to come by, so like the rear-fender inlet screens I'd made, I began by searching for some light screen that could be adapted to fit. Mesh garbage cans and silverware trays seem to be all the rage, but none of these looked to have the strength to handle the abuse. The size of the radiator was also the problem. Few unrelated products were large enough to cover the frontal area of the radiator.
Shockingly, I found a small sheet of expanded metal at Lowe's for a mere $8. It was a heavier guage than what I had initially wanted to use, plus the screen is larger than what I would have ideally wanted, but it was certainly robust enough to handle anything my front tire could ever throw at it.
Building it to fit looked to be easy enough. I first measured the width of my radiator, and by using the highly technical mathematical method of holding the screen in front of the radiator and marking it with a sharpie, I felt confident that my measurements would be amazingly accurate. I really should thank my high school geometry teacher.
The metal sidecaps of the radiator have a small gap, of about 1/8 th of an inch between the cooling fins and the caps. Enough of a gap that the expanded metal would fit underneath the leading edge of the solid side caps.
Using my trusty angle grinder I began following my precision sharpie marks. Within a few moments of cutting – and impressing the neighbor kids with all the flying sparks – I was already well on my way. I replaced the expanded metal in front of the radiator and measured the size from top to bottom, not yet accounting for the notches I would need to clear the existing mounting points at the center of the radiator.
Next, I measured the exact frontal area needed by some more brilliant sharpie action. To get the fit to be snug, I wrapped the expanded metal over the front of my metal workbench and used a ball peen hammer to bang out some nice, square angles. I would have preferred to do this in a vice, but my table vice was too small to hold the metal in place and provide a firm grip along the width of the expanded metal.
The last step of cutting was opening up notches on the top and center to acount for the radiator mounting points and to assure that the expanded metal would fit tightly over the front of the radiator. After a few final cuts and fits, I felt good about my handwork. Using the "measure twice and cut once" method, the screen fit so snug, wedging it under the front lip of the radiator cap, that I could probably have gotten away without fastening the metal to the radiator at all.
I used high-temperature primer and enamel satin black paint to match the expanded metal with the radiator. I hoped that it would be invisible and go unnoticed. The paint layed nicely and after baking in the sun for an hour it had cured enough to move on to the next step. While it was drying, I masked off the front of the Triple and sprayed the radiator itself to hide the silver crescent.
Mounting the screen to the radiator would be the most controversial part of the task. With no real place to mount the grill securely and fearing that simply mounting at the center points would result in a floppy grill and maybe even cracks. I choose to bore through the radiator itself.
The delicate metal fins on the surface of the radiator are only there for attitional surface area. Coolant flows through the side caps and horizontally along the narrow metal tubes that cross back and forth along the front of the radiator. As long as I did not damage the cross-tubes, boring through the radiator does not do any damage beyond sacrificing a negligible amount of surface area, which would probably be made up for with the expanded metal.
When I purchased the expanded metal screen, I had also picked up some stainless stteel bolts, locknuts and finishing grommets that would increase the size of the bolt head but have a nicer look than ordinary washers.
With the screen in place, I selected four corner locations that would be equidistant from each other and look symmetrical. Starting with my small hand awl, I pressed through the delicate radiator fins, then enlarged the hole to a suitable width for the bolt by using a small Phillips screwdriver. The bolts slipped right through and within a few moments the radiator was attached.
Because I had already masked the bike, I took out my black heat paint and lightly sprayed all the small scratches caused by mounting the screen and the stainless bolts, making their presence additionally subtle. When finished, the expanded metal grill was almost completely invisible and easily provides all the additional protection I could want. In fact, Mike was so impressed by my design that he built one for his Daytona. However, not agreeing with my bore-though mounting points, he choose to mount the grill at the center using the same mounting points as the radiator. However, because rubber isolates the mounting points to prevent stress fractures, he had a hard time achieving a firm connection and after a year, his grill was cracking. Mike also used his expanded metal to create turn-signal mounting points on the front of the bike. After two years of use, my method of mounting was just as secure as it was the day I installed it and I never had any more problems with damage to the radiator. Additionally, I did notice that I had fewer problems with the bike running excessivly hot.