The Limited came with a cooler, there's no sense in taking it off, and the Mothership seems to think it needs it. The Night Train has a very expensive, high-compression engine, and will be with me until I'm put in the ground. As such, it gets a cooler. I like the way it looks too. I understand that it's largely a placebo, and I'm cool with that (no pun intended).

If it makes you feel better to obsess about your oil and operating temperature, have at it. I totally understand that, as I've literally lost sleep over utterly inconsequential tuning issues.

But I understand that they're inconsequential.

The simple fact of the matter is that you can buy a stock bike in Arizona, do nothing but ride the **** out of it in the hot desert, and nothing bad will happen to it.

There are measurable benefits from getting a bike tuned......Better mileage, smoother running and more power. While you can certainly measure a temperature drop from a cooler, a parade fan, or a tune, what's questionable is the benefit of it. In other words, dropping the oil temperature from 240 degrees to 225 degrees does what?

And you well know that the typical rider does no more than 2-3 thousand fair-weather miles a year, and only keeps the bike for 3 years or so, so it's just especially futile.

 

What about this Plus One Oil pan from Baker Drivetrain? It allows the addition of one extra quart of oil thus extra cooling. Sounds logical, especially with an oil cooler bike such as my '12 EC.

Baker Linkhttp://www.bakerdrivetrain.com/flt/index.htm#p1p


Anyone running one of these? Any issues? How far down dose it hang below the frame? Can I still use my jack to lift the bike with one of these installed? I'm going to call Baker and depending on what they say, I may install one. If I do, I will let you know how much it drops the oil temp if any.

I for one, will not be convinced otherwise that when you have two pieces of metal rubbing together at high speeds, the cooler that metal, the better lubricated that metal, the less stress, wear and tear, the metal is subject too. Mechanics, metallurgist, and physicist figured that out a century ago. It also makes for a more comfortable ride.

There is also no disputing how far and long "conventional" twin cams have run. I have a 2005 Deluxe and a 2012 EC sitting in my shop. I ride both. The '05 88 has a stage I, the '12 103 has a stage II. The 88 runs considerably cooler.

But my question is about the Plus One oil pan.

Woolly

 

Someone (might have been fabrik8r) did the math on what an extra quart of oil does to oil temperature. IIRC, it was negligible.

There are a lot of things that people "know", and will hold onto even when presented with the reason(s) why what they "know" is wrong. There are an awful lot of companies out there who make a fortune selling products to "fix" perfectly good stock motorcycles. Hell, the 3,000 mile oil change never had anything to do with engine life, it was a marketing scheme to sell oil.

Anyway, the point is that if you feel better adding an oil cooler or a fan to your bike, do it. If you feel better changing your oil every 1,500 miles, do it. It won't hurt anything other than your wallet. But a stock or Stage One bike doesn't need it, and unless you plan on actually riding the thing a decent amount of miles and keeping the thing for 30 or 40 years, you'll never see the minuscule benefit of all that stuff.

 

Z06's have 7 quarts and Vipers have 10 quarts because extra oil volume does not do anything. Yeah! Right!

Run your bike with one quart. See what happens.

 

Yeah, right. We're not talking about a Viper or a Vette. As I said, someone here actually did the math, and the difference was nil (or close to it).

That's just silly. No one's suggesting that running a bike with no oil is plausible. As with everything, there's a proper amount. Given the size of the engine, there's a certain amount of oil required to keep everything lubricated at the correct flow and pressure.

If it makes you feel better (and it'll certainly make the people at Baker feel better), get the bigger oil pan. But until you show me the math that the extra quart is doing anything to keep the oil temperature down, then it's nothing but a placebo.

And that's assuming that there's anything gained by keeping the engine 10 or 20 degrees cooler.

 

I have a 2011 Ultra and bought a oil temp dipstick (gauge type). My oil temp was running about 260 on hot Texas days. I got se air cleaner, v/h dresser duals, 4"rineharts, and direct link , and dyno tuned. With all that done, my oil temp is still at 260 with cooler days now. There is less heat coming from the pipes because I got rid of the cat, but unless the gauge is defective I don't understand how the oil temp wouldn't drop any. This is puzzling to me.
On the positive side, the bike runs and sounds great.

 

Oil soaks up heat from the high heat areas and transports the heat to surfaces that soak the heat from the oil and radiates the heat to the air.

The more oil the more heat that gets removed. Why was the 103 increased from 3 quarts to 3.5 quarts? Why did HD put oil pans with a maze to increase the oil contact time?

The analogy to the high performance motors was to help dummies understand that to improve performance most companies add oil capacity. Anyone look in a Jegs catalog for the increased capacity oil pans that they sell to builders of high performance motors?

The math was done? Well post this mysterious math that shows oil quantity has no impact on engine cooling. The rest of the real world would like to know.

To the ones that say oil coolers don't work when standing. That is just plain ignorant. When standing hot oil is pumped through the cooler, heat from that oil will RADIATE in the air PULLING cooler air behind it as the hotter air rises. Yes, of course not as much as an 80 mile an hour wind will. But the additional surface area will dissipate heat. How the heck does a house hot water radiator function without wind? Hot air rises and is replaced by cooler air on and on.

To close. Oil stores heat the more oil capacity the more heat pulled from the heat source. 4 quarts of oil at 230 degrees has more 25% more stored heat than three quarts of oil at 230 degrees. Now provide more surface area by adding a cooler or a larger oil pan and more heat will be given off.

How does that math work for you?

What does running an engine cooler accomplish? Two things. First the cooler the engine runs will reduce wear. Metal wears faster the hotter it is. Power. The internal combustion motor will provide the most power when running at 160 degrees. Below that there is no improvement. Above that power starts dropping off.

Now, I am sure you want to know why this happens. If one understands that power in the motor is the expansion of gasses. The next step is to understand that getting the cooler start of a charged the more expansion it can do thus more pressure on the piston.

So memorize this. " A cooler engine runs stronger and lasts longer." You won't even have to pay me copyright fees for that.

 

You're math works perfectly for me! Well stated.

And as far as the power thing goes I can vouch for that. When I was younger I raced stock cars locally. As the engine temperatures rose, the power dropped off noticeably. Anything over 210 deg F and I was driving a real sled!

 

I'm trying to turn a new leaf here and get away from pointless and nonproductive arguing over unsubstantiated theory and errant logic. What we need is someone who has actually added the greater capacity oil pan and then monitored and recorded before and after results in a reasonably controlled and consistent manner. I'm all about the cooling but I have to question some of the claims and expanations provided. It’s real easy to loose focus when defending our positions but I would like to point out that the previously mentioned 160F is optimum coolant temp in a water-cooled engine. What we are concerned with is oil temp and CHTs; 160F oil would be too cool as a sustained operating temp, and a 160F CHT isn’t hot enough for the ECM to exit warm up enrichment mode. While true part of the oil’s job is to carry away heat, oil is actually a relatively poor thermal conductor and has limited cooling potential without the addition of a pupose built heat exchanger, hence the advent of the water-cooled engine. The Baker pan doesn’t alter the way the oiling system works, it just adds more oil; more oil doesn’t remove more heat, you just have more oil removing the same heat, in the same engine, same high heat areas, same amount of heat produced by the same amount of combustion, oil travels through the engine the same distance and time per circulating cycle outside the reservoir. There will be slightly increased hover time in the bulk reservoir between cycles, but the pan is not an effective heat exchanger, so extra time in the pan is of no significant benefit. A true heat exchanger maximizes the surface area contact between the oil and the exchanger material; that’s why the passages in oil coolers have a narrow rectangular cross section. Skeptical; heat up 2qts of oil, put 1 qt in regular small pan, put the other qt in a large shallow pan like a cookie sheet, of the same material, and see which one retains heat longer. Anyway, I have found my bike 1 qt low on oil on more than one occasion, when I added the 1 qt to top it off, I ended up reaching the same normalized oil temp, it just took a little longer to get there. I'm pretty sure that is what’s happening with the extra capacity oil pan. In stock configuration and tune condition, from a cold start up, it takes 30-45 minutes of steady riding to reach normalized temps. If you add 20% more oil to the system it will take considerably longer to get that extra oil hot. I'm pretty confident that the Baker pans don't actually “lower” oil temp but rather delay the climb to normalized temp, I'm sure a few long distance, long interval rides would reveal the answer. Had I started my oil cooling endeavor with the Baker +1, I would have a justified answer on the subject, but I didn't. I started working with an oil cooler and I have all the data for that project. Now since I have my oil temp optimized, there is no reason for me to investigate the effectiveness of the Baker pans. Either way the actual claims by users of the Baker+ pans, that I have read here and elsewhere, are not very impressive for $450.00-$700.00; for the most part anywhere from "didn't notice any difference" to "5*,10*, or 15* lower". That much money will buy a lot of cooling if you spend it wisely. Although I don’t really care about the Baker oil pans, and I would never buy one, I would be interested in an unbiased valid answer as to their effectiveness.

 

Well put, and I agree.

As I've said, someone here's done it and done the actual math on the increase in oil volume. It confirms your suspicions.