Water cooled bikes and the Polar Vortex

I keep my SV650 in a heated storage space, so I just left the water/water wetter in it. I'm out of town for work for the entire month. My dad just called me to say he checked on the space, and the heater had stopped working. Everything is frozen (I live in NE Ohio).

Now what? It's safe to assume the water in the system has frozen. What should I be looking at....this sucks.

...I knew I should have drained it or put anti-freeze. Wasn't thinking that my heated space wouldn't be heated .

 

All you can really do at this point is wait for it to thaw and see what damage has been done. Some of it depends on how bad it froze, how much it expanded. Did it have room to expand or did it break through the lines and such. I don’t know of any way to prep or know until it’s thawed.

 

water itself will expand 9% when subjected to 32 degree temps.
How cold do you think the space got?

 

I bought a parts sv that the previous owner did the same. It popped the freeze plug out of the head, which is just a casting plug that acts as a freeze plug from my understanding.

I was sending the engine out to get rebuilt regardless, so it was just repaired at that time. Not sure how hard they are to repair with the engine still in the bike.

 

You'll know if you popped a freeze plug when you fire it up...
I've left water in mine more than one winter and was always lucky- no issues.

 

Thanks all. I won't even be back with the bike until mid Feb, so for now all I can do is stress from a distance. It's supposed to thaw out there over the next week so hopefully I can get my dad to drain it in case the heater fails again.

 

The way you say this it sounds like water continues to expand the colder it gets. I'm about to google it but I would imagine after it's frozen thats it, no more expanding.

 

Has to be that exact temp. It will only expand a max of 9%. For proof...put a water bottle in your freezer for 2 days.
I was able to freeze the ding out of an exhaust header primary.

 

Both my GSXR Liters in my garage have coolant in them.
But the last 2 days, it's been wicked cold. LIke -25F- no wind chill
We do put the double wide garage door up and down everytime we drive our garage kept cages/SUV's.
When i got in the SUV's, before I lifter the door/started- it read the temp as low at 14F. While thats a lot better than -25, it's still cold.
Hope my coolant/antifreeze is adequate. And if not, I pray it only pops the freeze plug!!

 

Look at freeze plugs in heads, water pump, radiator, and thermostat housing for starters. I have one here now that the water pump housing cracked a bit from freezing.

 

It take what 3-5 minutes to adequately drain the system at the end of the season. Many people don't who live in colder areas and I don't understand it.

My friend did a test a couple years ago with water wetter, antifreeze, engine ice, the Honda hp antifreeze, and a couple others if I recall. It got to 15 degrees for a period of about 24 hours. They all froze. That was enough for me to drain my bikes.

He had a video. I'll see if I can find it.

 

C’mon. We’ll spend weeks at 15 or colder and I’ve NEVER had a freezing issue with antifreeze. -30 for several days this week and no freezing issue, parked out in the elements for 10 hours/day at work.

 

Well your friend is doing something wrong then because the only things froze up here are the vehicles not mixed properly.

 

yeah I would think the coolant, undilluted, would not freeze until something like 50 or 60 below. At the traditional ratio of 50/50 I think its only rated to about 25 below or so.

 

Not denying that could be the case. I'm going to see if I can get the video and so the specifics from him.

 

Actually pure Ethylene Glycol has a freeze point of +5, most commercially available has a small amount of water which lowers it to 0 or so. It requires dilution with water to lower the freeze point. A 50/50 mix is good for about -34

 

I've got two jugs of EG anti-freeze. One is Peak and other is Pentofrost brand. Both say 50/50 gets -34 protection and increasing to 60/40 (more anti-freeze) gets -62 degs.

 

pardon my ignorance on freeze protection...lol The coldest weather I contend with is getting my ice pack out of the freezer.

 

A few issues with draining the system is now its unprotected entirely, that and how can you be sure all the water is out of any place it could freeze and possibly do damage? The risk is a lot lower than having it filled with water, but should be negated by filling the system with a proper coolant charge.

 

There is actually quite a few people who believe what you did. It's weird but encountered one of them today by accident, he was buying antifreeze at the local farm store and was telling the guy helping him he was going to put it in straight so it couldn't freeze. Showed him the chart on the bottle and I still don't think he believed it.