Has anybody found a temperature gauge or a way to stick a thermometer on a motorcycle engine? I am really curious about the engine temp under various conditions, and I'm kinda shocked that there seems to be no temp gauges available. One would think this would be a major concern for anybody with an air-cooled bike.
May not be the correct size, but they do have them.
http://www.denniskirk.com/jsp/product_catalog/Product.jsp?skuId=40757&store=Main&productId=p40757&catId=4&leafCatId=41409
Hey, wow thanks! I found the Japanese maker of this gauge but not a dealer. That was fast! It looks like there's an adapter so it would fit the GS.
I appreciate the amazing response on this forum. I'll let everyone know if the thing works!
OOOOOPS!
They want $17.95 for the adaptor to fit the drain plug, and $97 for the #$^&(*^% gauge!!
No way it's worth that much. I'll use hi temp epoxy and a freakin' dime store gauge.
The oil temp would be a handy thing to know. Deciding where to sense the temp would be the tough part.
The commercial unit seemed to put the sensor in the oil drain plug. If your bike is the late model with an oil cooler, the input to the radiator would be as good a place as any.
Let us know what you figure out. It would be very useful to the group.
they make temp gauges for nitro power rc cars. it looks like the one in that pic pretty much but it had a loop that you would put around the heat sink head on the rc car engine. I will find it then post the link. It works in F and C.
Here is a list from TowerHobbies, a distributer site.
http://www2.towerhobbies.com/cgi-bin/WTI0095P?FVSEARCH=temp&FVPROFIL=++
I believe they all have a recall feature to them so you can get the highest temp reached. When looking at that site scroll down alittle and youll see the features and stuff. There is a list before the features that has links to other stuff just scroll past it.
Well... if it's one thing Harley DEFINITELY knows how to do well, it's market gizmos and gadgets. My Dad's HD has this nifty temp guage right on the dipstick... Pretty handy I think. I believe the dipstick itself is a probe into the crankcase. No drilling, nothing to mess up. Probably cost $50 though b/c of the HD label...
trey
Quote from: treybradWell... if it's one thing Harley DEFINITELY knows how to do well, it's market gizmos and gadgets. My Dad's HD has this nifty temp guage right on the dipstick... Pretty handy I think. I believe the dipstick itself is a probe into the crankcase. No drilling, nothing to mess up. Probably cost $50 though b/c of the HD label...
trey
Yea I think I remember seeing something like that on a GS a while back, no idea where I saw it though.
You need an oil thermometer with a 7.5 inch stem. Weksler makes one, like $25 ... then take off the dipstick and cut and drill and tap it to take this ... and screw it in ... option 2 is to get a dual guage oil pressure and temperature guage and fit it off the oil galley plug on the right bottom of the motor. Drill and tap that to take a banjo bolt and fit a SS line into the thing and fit a guage on the other end of that line. That is what i did in the past and then had a guage (OK I used a cheapo walmart $3.95 guage) and had it blow and shower me with hot oil. But get a good quality dual guage and it should not blow.
But Mountaineer ... unless we all stuffed guages on our bikes and ran it right side by side wiht yours and heck had it all sent to a datamapping program ... you're going to be the only one wiht a temperature reading ... maing it impossible to conclude anyhting.
Cool.
Srinath.
was thinkin of a BBQ grill thermometer taped for the case, or even a mechanical water temp gauge, temp is temp.
All I want to know is, how hot is the engine?
If I ride steady at 55mph on a 2-lane road between Poca and Point Pleasant, I should get a pretty consistent reading, which I would then call "normal." When I am riding up a long, twisty grade such as from Gauley Bridge to Hawk's Nest, my guess is the thing will get hotter.
When I am REALLY bogged down, like winding up Kayford Mountain to a mountaintop removal strip mine site on a dirt road loaded with boulders in first and second gear, the f*cker's going to REALLY get hot. That's what I'd like to know-when does the bike really get hot, and does it exceed the oil's working limits? It also would tell me if something goes wrong and the bike is out of tune.
Thanks for the ideas, now I'm looking for a cheap contact thermometer I can stick on with epoxy. The ones made for wood burning stoves might work but the range is too wide-like 50 to 800 degrees Farenheit.
Yosh used to make a digital one that ran off the oil plug on the lower right side of the engine for the GSXR's. Find an old one of those and it should work. Good luck though, I've only ever seen one and it was on gsxr.com.
we used to check temp on the FJ1200 powered legends race cars....10 yrs ago....
hot....
pegging the guage above 350....
warping the crap out of the cylinder....
burning the synth oil.....
you will gain nothing from the info .... what are you going to use as a reference point....other than having a guage on you bike
i already posted, but i think it would probably just make you worry about your bike more if you had a guage and saw the temp rise.
Remember, oil temperature on an air-cooled engine does not reflect the cylinder head temperature. (CHT) CHT is a far better indication of the operating state of the cylinders. As a baseline, normal should be up to 350-400 degrees on *most* aircraft engines.
CHT can vary wildly while the oil temp stays stable. That's why oil temperature is not a reliable reading of engine operating conditions. Standard convention is to put the probe on the pressure side of the loop, not in the sump. This means the oil has cooled after going through the sump/intercooler/etc.
Interesting that there can be so much complexity in such a simple concept. All I want to do is get a reading on how hot the engine is-not the oil, not the heads, not the cylinders. A reference could be, the temp of the crankcase on a normal run, say level ground at 60mph after at least 15 minutes. Let's just assume that would be roughly 200 F. Some gauges use the oil drain plug as the temp input, and that makes sense to me. This should be pretty close to the temp of the oil, since the oil is in contact with the aluminum crankcase and aluminum is a good conductor of heat.
Such a gauge would then be useful to tell when the engine heats up, as in extreme hill-climbing or slow traffic in town. At some point, the engine may reach a temp such that the oil no longer works well, or maybe even gets burnt. Then it's time to stop and cool off. It also might tell you if the engine is out of tune or running poorly.
Most vehicles with an engine give you a temp gauge so you know if the thing is overheating. Except that now that I think about it, did the old air-cooled VWs have temp gauges??? Maybe they didn't want us to worry either.
i dont think the vw's had temp guages. My friend and his dad totally rebuilt one and he didnt have one, but they might have left it off or somthing. But I dont think they had one.
I think you're right, come to think of it they didn't have a GAS gauge either, VWs used the reserve switch like bikes.