Hi everyone

Dusted the cobwebs off my 893 Fireblade yesterday for the first time in months, started it up and noticed the cooling fan wasnt kicking in and the temperature gauge would go right into the red, i have checked the fuse and that is fine but is there anything else likely to be causing this? next logical step would be to manually short out the thermostat and see if the fan will run, then maybe change the thermostat assuming all is ok with the fan

any other ideas? its a bit different to the trusty thrusty DT... most things on that could be fixed with bodge tap and bootlaces...

It shouldn't be overheating at normal running speeds. Shorting the fan is a good idea.

Check fluid and air locks. Run the bike with the expansion or rad cap off for a while and see what happens to the fluid.

Check the thermostat is opening.

Check the water pump but assuming you can see water flowing with the rad cap off it should be ok.

Check the rad. Reverse flush it

That should do for starters.

Generally the fan and the gague use separate senders. One resistive for the gague genrally on the head somewhere,you may have one for the cdi too. The other a temp sensativeswitch. Prob on the rad somewhere.

The very first thing to check here are the switches themselves. We all know just how boringly reliable the early blades are so thats where i would start.

Then crack on with DDTs list.

ok cheers for the input peeps sounds good, can't see myself keeping the blade though, not as comfy as my XJ was, also the overheating was not on the road as its not T&T'd yet, this was just starting it and letting it run

as your bike has been sitting for awhile try spinning the fan a bit it might be seized up,wouldn't be the first 1 i have seen with a wee shove starts working again.