My stupid idea of the week (fixing busted cooling fins)

[BuzZz]

I believe the general consensus was that JB Weld would do nothing to help with cooling, and being non-metallic, would not expand and contract at the same rate as the fins, therefore cracking and falling off in a short time.

[ill'n]

I stumbled across the HTS-2000 product while surfing the web. It's a welding rod that is made of 9 different alloys and simply require using a portable hand-held propane torch to heat the base metal before melting the rod onto it. When cooled, it claims to be stronger than the base metal. You can see the info here. They say it's so easy anyone can do it, and doesn't require any special equipment except for the hand-held propane torch. Since the substance itself is a metal alloy, it should solve the problem of dissipating engine heat. I've never tried it, and I can't seem to find any user feedback on it. Has anyone else ever heard of this product?

[Skier]

So, in my Rad's earlier life, someone dumped it pretty hard at least once. Because of this, there are a couple cooling fins broken off on the engine. Looks to be on the cylinder head. Nothing too big missing but it sure don't look right. We're tlaking maybe 1/2" tall by 1" long section or two.

Now, my stupid idea: using some wooden forms with wax paper and making the fins with JB Weld. I haven't used JB Weld too much so I'm not sure how strong it is nor hot it handles heat changes like my air-cooled engine would put it through. Any thoughts on doing this? I figure the worst that can happen is the JB Weld eventually cracks off from too many heating/cooling cycles and at best it's an acceptable replacement.

Hi Just chip my fins on my CB750K K4, not big enough to effect cooling but the bike is near perfect and bugs hell out of me! Did this idea work? Thanks Mike

I never got around to doing it. The bike never overheated and it wasn't the best looking 20 year old bike anyways. I was more interested in riding it than fixing it up, cosmetically.

It's still running now, although I sold it to a friend of a friend. I think he's put on another 7 or 8 thousand miles and it's still going strong.