Thermostat housing drool

Hello all. I came back from a long o/s holiday to find corrosion gunk all around the cylinder base, and especially in the valley under the starter motor. Looking closely, I saw a drop of coolant hanging from the thermostat housing. Basically, the leak had been happening for two months or so.
It turned out that the thermostat sealing ring (attached to the thermostat) had compressed. I had a new thermo on hand - problem solved.
While doing that job, I saw that the crankcase clutch lever return spring has broken.
The bike has around 26K and 1400 engine hours on the clock. Would this be a much better bike for my purpose if it was air-cooled. Very probably. I'm continually chasing coolant leaks where clamps have been loosened by ploughing through scrub.

I have not much to add other than saying you are doing a public service to us all  maybe that's a bit of encouragement for your troubles haha

The way you abuse the bike (from what I gather from your posts), I think most owners will experience similar faults at probably twice the mileage you have, so it's interesting to see what future work we other guys are probably up against.
Mine has about 48k km on the clock (30k miles) and have had zero issues apart from the stator recall (germany = cold weather = would probably have lasted the lifetime of the bike, but hey why refuse a new one for free?).

so basically... thanks for abusing the bike the way you do

Ha ha bigg!! As long as I'm doing everyone a service, it's all good, no? Even though the bike is used outside its design envelope, it is, imo, a viable alternative for what I do as long as it's understood there will probably be some issues and to budget for them. It was always an experiment, and steep learning curve because of it. Good to ride for what I need is the big selling point imo.

If I buy another one, I'd do a lot of things differently. for example, remove the AIS completely before I even started it. Then the breather hose from the airbox, and seal both holes VERY CAREFULLY. These bloody things have been allowing dirt to be sucked into the engine continuously, and I've only recently worked it all out. Also the flapper mod - before even ride it. Quite a noticeable difference in that the engine won't bog as much in the lower-mid-range.