I rode all my other bikes back and forth to the plant where I worked. When the shift ended I would rush out to the parking lot and be on my way before most of the workers got their car doors open. We had thousands of workers on each shift, so if you didn't hustle, you got caught in grid lock. Needless to say there was never any engine warm up involved. Fortunately the interstate was 2 miles away so the bike would be fairly warmed up, before I got up to Mach speed.
Tom

 

I live half way up a hill and need to go up for the easiest transition off the hill so at 5 in the morning "if I am up my neighbors are up"cause I'm rattlin' the windows.

 

If your big enough to have a HD.... you should know when its warm.

 

I think all this warm up crap is a lot of "Who shot John." If the oil pump's pumping, just get on the thing and ride it.

[IMG]local://upfiles/1638/1F7C288377A04474B3F2A908FB29DE5E.jpg[/IMG]

 

Yeah,

I used to give a zhit, but no more.

One side has people on their porch till 1 AM, BS'ing loud as heck. The other side has an Audi Quattro that I swear has no muffler at all.

I get my revenge in the morning, 5:30 AM,

I feel fine after that,[sm=devilangel.gif]

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I used to think about the neighbors in the AM until the word got back to me.A lot of them thought we would burn their houses down if they pissed us off.No idea where that ever came from.Anyway,except for speed the noise is the last of my worries.We are very respectable,our friends say

 

I always back the bike out of garage and roll the bike between our two carswith the business end of the Rienhearts aimedtowardsour ownhouse. Let it idle while I put on my gear. I want that engine to idle at least a couple minutes.

 

I pay taxes just like they do. The fast and furious come in at 2 a.m. with their buzzing exhaust so a couple hours later I leave and set their alarms off...LOL.

 

[sm=funnypostabove.gif][sm=goodidea.gif][sm=icon_rofl.gif]

 

A somewhat lengthy post from American Rider regarding proper warm-up procedures for your hog. Some may find it interesting, some may find it overkill. Whatever.

DJK


Warming-up an engine and how it is accomplished is generally not particularly critical. If it were, there would be one or two ways to do it and engine makers would surely draw our attention to the matter more strongly than they do. However, engine warm-up is important and it is a good idea that we all know something about the matter.
There are reasons why one should indulge in coddling an engine until it has reached operating temperature, reasons why one should not, and at least a couple why it doesn't matter very much.
Safety is the most important reason to warm an engine before riding. Most stock engines tend to lack power and deliver uncertain throttle response until they have run for at least a few minutes. In fact, some engines will stop running altogether if the throttle is quickly and fully opened immediately after they are started. If that were to happen in front or someone running a stop sign with their SUV, well.... This kind of scenario, by the way, is the main reason manufacturers often recommend long pre-ride warm-ups.

Many of the motor parts inside your Harley engine do not fit and work together well until they are at or near normal operating temperatures. I think the best example is the cylinder-and-head stack. Evo, Sportster and Twin Cam engines have aluminum cylinders, heads and rocker boxes. However, the studs that hold those parts together are steel. The difference in the temperature-related expansion rate between aluminum and steel is about 10 to one. Thus, the head gaskets are squeezed much tighter after the motor is hot. Early Evos would often blow head gaskets if they were given full throttle before the cylinders and heads were warm. The earlier Shovelheads and Iron Sportsters did not have this problem and, at least in this one respect, were superior designs.

I once asked Erik Buell if he had considered using the very stable Axtel iron cylinders on his racing Buells. Erik replied that they had tested the cylinders but could not use them because road racing motorcycles must endure full throttle and high rpm at the drop of the flag; the iron cylinders, needing more time to come to temperature, wouldn't grow fast enough and the pistons would seize. I have seen this happen to water-cooled two-stroke road racing engines when they were not fully warmed before the flag dropped. These engines must do their best work at high temperatures and the most dangerous time for them is the first lap.

On the other hand, drag race motors never get very hot. The heads do, but nothing else does. Drag racing engine tuners know this and set the motors up accordingly. Byron Hines told me that a Pro-Stock Suzuki or Kawasaki's engine oil would be barely warm to the touch after a race. The wonderfully powerful engines he built would make 225-plus horsepower for six or seven seconds, the time it took them to get through the quarter mile. They might not have finished a half-mile in one piece.

So much for the extremes. Lets look at our street Harley motors and how we use them. Most of the time we are asking them to produce less than 15 Horsepower when traveling at steady speeds. About 10 horsepower are needed to push a Sportster down a flat, windless road at 60 mph. An FXD or bare Softail needs 11 or so and a full touring rig about 13. This isn't much of a load for an engine capable of producing 60 peak horsepowe