Water cooled vs air cooled

[scratch]

Air-cooled bike are more crash-survivable.  Try riding home with a punctured radiator.

[Suzuki Stevo]

It's always been my belief, that any air cooled engine idling can dissipate enough heat to survive indefinitely and no data to back that statement up, but I do know that air cooled engines are more dependable than water cooled engines for obvious reasons. 

[johnny ro]

to sit and idle for long period watercooled is better. They have thermostats, waterpumps, fans. The fan turns on like on a car. Anything malfunctions and its toast. Air cooled without a fan (think porsche, air cooled with fan, or think lawn mower) is toast too. No so many air cooled bikes have fans, other than scooters.

[gregvhen]

The reduction in thermal expansion issues means you can run tighter tolerances, which means you can spin the engine up higher, and produce more horsepower.

yea, but i still have never seen a bikes redline, water or air cooled, above 13,000, and the gs is 11,000 so its not that big of a differance. and GS isnt exactly a high end bike either

[lucifer_mr2]

The reduction in thermal expansion issues means you can run tighter tolerances, which means you can spin the engine up higher, and produce more horsepower.

yea, but i still have never seen a bikes redline, water or air cooled, above 13,000, and the gs is 11,000 so its not that big of a differance. and GS isnt exactly a high end bike either

I have. One of my old friends had a bike that redlined at about 20,000rpm. I gave it a bit of a rev to about 17,000 rpm and it sounded like an electric drill. Highest I've ever had a bike on the road was a Suzuki Across that I took to a bit over 15,000rpm, and it had further to go.

Check out some of the 250 4-cylinder bikes (CBR, FZR, ZXR), they need 8,000+ rpm to even ride.

The rev limit is normally due to piston speeds, they can only go so fast.

[tt_four]

yea, but i still have never seen a bikes redline, water or air cooled, above 13,000, and the gs is 11,000 so its not that big of a differance. and GS isnt exactly a high end bike either

Do you mean in person, or in general? A lot of 600's are are a couple thousand RPMs higher than that currently, plus like Lucifer said, those little bikes like cbr250s rev like crazy.

Other than that, I know Buell XBs have a fan for their air cooled motor, only the rear cylinder though. It's LOUD too. I don't know if I've seen many others that do.

[utgunslinger13]

http://gstwins.com/gsboard/index.php?topic=27008.msg284738#msg284738

Would these temps be accurate to what I would expect to see using the spark plug sensor that comes with the Trail Tech Vapor Gauges?

This is the sensor that is used:
http://www.trailtech.net/7500-3010.html

Thanks,

Nick