[QUOTE=Ghost_13;16349341 My kid has one more week before shipping out to boot camp - trying to spend as much time with him as I can till them

After that - some real (completely independent and unbiased) temp management testing will be taking place - all centered around oil temps

Your product..., along with two others will be in the mix...., however..., if I can get my hands on some wards fans - I'll throw those in into the mix as well.Ghost[/QUOTE]

Hey @Ghost_13 I hope your son is settling into military life well. I'm grateful for his service.

Did you ever do this testing? I'd love to see the results if you did. I checked under you profile but didnt see a relate thread started by you.

 

I know this thread's been around a while, but reading it has been helpful to me, and has made me try to noodle through the pros and cons of fans vs oil coolers. For what it's worth, here's what's rattling around between my ears:

1. The idea that fans fool the ECM because they blow air directly across the ETS doesn't seem very well thought through. The portion of the sensor that measures heat is not exposed to airflow, so it can only be effected by a reduction of the temperature of the metal around it. Sure, the body of the sensor is cooled by air flow, but I have a hard time imagining that will have much effect on the sensor itself.

2. Oil coolers are a tried-and-true method of reducing oil temperatures, which means (among other things) that the oil is then capable of drawing more heat from the engine as it makes it's next pass through. But oil flow ***seem to me*** to be a secondary means of reducing engine temps on a Harley, the primary means being the cooling fins on the heads and cylinders. If this is true, then making a substantial improvement to the primary means of cooling seems like a better idea than making an similar improvement to the secondary means. Why? The primary means removes heat at the source (primarily the cylinder heads) and is immediate, transfering heat out of the engine into the atmosphere whereas the secondary means provides cooling by drawing heat with it and creating a cooling effect by exposing other, cooler parts of the engine assembly (oil passages through cooler regions of the engine, the oil filter, and - if so fitted - an oil cooler) to this heat. To my mind, improving the effectiveness of this secondary cooling process seems slower by comparison, and less effective at drawing heat from the primary source of it, the cylinder heads.

3. Oil coolers are doing the very same thing that cylinder and head cooling fins do: Exposing engine heat to the atmosphere: they just do it away from the source.

So what's better? Improving the effectiveness of the secondary cooling method by briefly passing engine oil through a radiator each cycle, or by applying a constant, at-the-source improvement to the effectiveness of the cooling fins? Hell, I don't know, I'm not a physicist, I've never done experiments and I've never seen the results of anyone else's well-considered, unbiased tests. But to ***my*** mind, it seems that improving cooling in real-time at the source would be a better solution, especially if your concern is the health of your pistons and cylinders. Heat induced expansion there can pretty well ruin your day in very short order (says the voice of experience).

Just my two cents.