my buddy has a 2005 rmz from ebay it has so problems..he paid 1900 for it he rode it once for about 10 minutes  it was over heating ......pissing antifreeze eveyehere  ppissing out oil from the oil overflow .....the head pip was cherry red....on a bright clear day and it was smoking.....i gave him my input of  something screwed up with the valves and stuck water pump... scored piston creating heat...so i wanted some more peoples input...o and hard starting

common problem with the 04's with the overheating...but the rest...umm..smoke could b oil in the piston like a broken gasket....head pipe could b a result of the coolant...im not an expert

ya i mean i just told him to take it somewhere and say get it running right lol because its not worth 10 hours in the garage  tinkering

sounds like a blown head gasket and our poor coolant ciculation the pipe does get hotter than most. their is a weep hole on right side of piston head right below top of kick start put finger over it and kick it over with other hand if it blowes air our coolant you have a blown head gasket. The oil spitting out of case is probabley cracked piston our worn rings on piston creating pressure in case. If you fix all of that your self your looking around $550 for piston and all top end gaskets,seals and tools.

When the header pipe turns red, is this sign of something wrong?
We fired up my friends bike the other night after working on it, we noticed that after idling for a bit the header became bright red...
I figure this is probably normal since it does get hot, and from what I heard the crf 450r s runs a bit hot..

I have been told the 04 and 05 you dont want to let idle for to long standing still. the will start to boil. warm up time is less than a minute.

kxtwofiddyeff said:

I own an 04 RM-Z 250... First, buy a Boyesen water pump cover + impeller kit. It has a beefier impeller that moves a lot more rad fluid and helps cool the motor better. Buy Water Wetter and use it with your radiator fluid. Next, get a higher PSI radiator cap for the RMZ. I think I bought a 2004 Kawasaki KX 125 cap, which was rated at 1.8 instead of the stock RMZ's 1.2 radiator cap.

Tear down the top end of the bike if it's hard to start. Sounds like the valve clearance needs to be checked.

Btw, on my 04, the exhaust pipe would get bright red VERY quickly. After upgrading, the pipe would still get glowing hot, but the radiator fluid never boiled over.

I also bought Fluidyne radiators! Best investment, well besides suspension! lol.

anyone have an 05 rmz manual they can send me.

send to therussian77@gmail.com
thanks