Whenever u want a test bike mine is all urs. Really like all the backround work done. Great job. Hope to see ur product soon for sale. Who says the little guy cannot make it!!!!!

 

Obama

 

HD says 230*.

 

Now there is a fantastic question, and one you won't eaily find a qualified answer to. First you got to define "ideal", for me it is the absolute coldest I can run the oil without creating and oil related problem. After a lot of unoffical research on BITOG and other web sites, and finally a long conversation with an old top fuel drag bike builder, I have settled on 173F as absolute minimum operating temperature for conventional oil. I didn't conjure this up out of thin air, Mobil relased a document years ago that quoted this value for conventional oil minimum operating temperature. I don't have a copy, but I trust the source. I don't know of anyone on a Twin Cam that has normal oil temps below this or close to this for that matter. Discard the water boils at 212F hubub, not necessary to get that hot, water will seperate at any temperature, again I don't know too many Twin Cams that normalize below 212F either.

 

HD says 230F is "normal" for the Twin Cam, but mnormal and optimum are two different animals.

 

Very interested, in this thread.... thanks

 

173F sounds about right for absolutely MINIMUM. But Minimum isn't ideal. IIRC SRT Engineers said 180 degree oil temp MINIMUM before going WOT.

Incorrect about water separation, you don't want any water, you want it to boil off, otherwise you compromise lubrication.

The oil temp. you want is the one that provides the most protection with the best viscosity.

 

I'm good with that. lets add 7 degrees and call it a flat 180F for optimum, that was really my specific target with a small margin of error factored, but still haven't made it there yet, even with a fan assisted oil cooler and parade fans together, so I'm inclined to believe that too cool is not going to be a problem for very many people. While I agree that no you don't want any water in your oil, the oil temp does not have to reach the boiling point of water for the condensation to "burn off"; This is not my personal theory, its a long standing scientific fact that moisture will seperate from the oil at any temperature, it just does so faster as it gets hotter. Can you provide a link to the IIRC Engineers quote of 180F, that would definately be a qualified source, that I can quote in the future.

 

I did some tests one summer using the PCV-AT with a map switch, allowing me to toggle between a lean and rich map on the fly. The rich map was set to 13.5:1 and lean at stoich (14.6:1) in the cruise range. Running at 50-60mph over time I saw only ~7° difference in FCHT and no change in oil temps between the two maps. I monitored with the LCD-200 display unit from DynoJet for FCHT and the HD fairing-mounted gauge for oil temp.

I didn't do any tests in city riding, but when in lean mode the FCHT rarely exceeds 280° in traffic as long as it doesn't stop for extended periods. I did use the map switch occasionally while I had it installed, but I didn't find that it made that much difference in traffic.

I have the PV now and have two tunes installed, either of which can be flashed at any time after shutting the bike off on the side of the road. One is 13.0:1 in the cruise range and the other 14.6:1, but I have yet to use the richer tune, which would only be put to use in the worst of gridlock traffic when CHT and OT get alarmingly high. For me that would be 300° and 230° respectively.

 

I have an oil cooler installed and have played around with cooler fans on three different occasions, abandoning the projects each time because the fans failed. I would like to use a head fan but have not gone that route because I have Rivco air horns installed in place of the stock horn and neither the LeNale nor HD fan will fit. Fabrik8r's concept might work for me if the location could be moved to fit around the horns, although I don't have much room to work with, especially on the front cylinder. I've toyed with various ideas including mounting something like a Spal fan on the right-side of the engine, but nothing has come of it.