Greetings all,

I've got a 1985 Maxim X 700 that was supposed to be a winter project but has become my daily driver since my Honda CX500 blew its stator last week. I've put a reasonable amount of time into getting the Maxim up and running happily. If I leave it sit and idle, it warms up nicely, the electric fan kicks in and out as needed and everything is happy. If I ride the bike around the garage (~60F ambient), the needle on the temp gague drop to about 1/4 up. If I take it for a ride outside (~20F ambient), the temp gague bottoms out and the non-idling, lousy performance that comes along with being cold shows up.

I figured the thermostat was either missing or stuck open,. I popped open the housing and took out a perfectly functional 89C thermostat. It was fully closed as it should be and had a good amount of pressure keeping it that way. Just for good measure, I put in a new 91C thermostat that I had on the shelf. I put it all back together and it acts exactly the same.

Anyone have any good ideas as per why this thing would act like it doesn't have a thermostat?

Thanks in advance...

I can't remember what car this happend on but a friend of mine had this happen to him. Turned out he installed the thermostat backwards. That may or may not be possible on the Maxim X. I don't own one and have not worked on one either. The car this happened on had the thermostat mounted into the radiator hose and then into the block housing. When backwards the water flow pushed it open. Reverse it and the water couldn't push it open. HTH. :)