Where does this hose go to?

I bought a '98 VFR 800 last year & noticed a very tiny leak, along with the smell of burned antifreeze. I finally traced it down to this shoddy little job behind the reservoir tank. It's not covered in any repair manual I can find. The parts schematics show a hose labeled as going to the throttle assembly(!?!?), which makes absolutely no sense to me at all. I simply can't see anything to connect to. For now, I'm going to do a much better job of plugging that outlet off, but would just as soon do it as it was designed. Thanks in advance for any help.

 

Looks like a feed for water to the wax unit on the throttle bodies, which your 98 does not have (this was from 00 onwards, and replaces the manual "choke" lever on your left bar). So capping it off is a good idea. #10 on the parts diagram.

https://www.partzilla.com/catalog/honda/motorcycle/1998/vfr800fi-a-interceptor/water-pump

 

Thank you! That makes sense & eases my mind.

We are itching to get back to your neck of the woods in NZ! We did a 16-day tour of both islands in January 2020 & hope to be back next January for the 21-day tour, again with Paradise Motorcycle Tours. Great places & folks everywhere, and we absolutely fell in love with the South Island within 10 minutes after we got off the ferry.

 

I love a mystery, and it seems like you've got a little bit of a mystery on your hands:

Why does your '98 VFR800 have a "Joint B" (the coolant supply joint for the engine's rear cylinder head) that doesn't belong on a 1998 engine?

My suspicious mind jumps immediately to thinking that the "Joint B" arrived on your motorcycle as the result of a complete engine replacement. Have you looked at the Engine Serial Number on your '98? Does your VFR's engine serial number correspond properly to a '98 year model VFR800?



As an example here's a picture of the engine serial number on my '99 VFR800:


The decode for the year model of a Honda motorcycle engine is as follows: The first 5 characters correspond/match to the type of motorcycle the engine was built for, the 6th character (the one immediately after the "-" dash) is always the numeral "2", the 7th character (the second character after the "-" dash) is the important one for determining the year model of the engine: if your VFR800 engine serial number has a "0" in the 7th position the engine is a 1998, if the 7th position is a "2" the engine is a 1999, if the 7th position is a "3" the engine is a 2000, if the 7th position is a "4" the engine is a 2001.

The remaining 5 character positions of the engine serial number are the individual serial number for that engine.

 

GreginDenver: forgive my lack of skills with a camera & lighting, but it is definitely a zero. The bike only had just over 21K miles on when I bought it, so I had my doubts that the previous owner dropped a new engine in, but it was worth the check. Everything "looks" original from what little I know about Old Skool Hondas. At this point, it's a cross between & elephant & a rhino: an elephino...

I ride a big Beemer sport touring bike in my other life & picked this up to ride day trips around the Smokies because I couldn't get out & about very far last year. I must say it's a great grass roots kick in the pants ride, though I'm probably a bit too tall & too mature to fully enjoy it. I did install Helibars & that made a world of difference.