Hello all, Im new to this board as you can see. Im looking into getting my first bike and am pretty sure I'd like a GS. The other option Im considering is a Ninja 500. My question is how would the air cooling in the GS handle Florida's hot summer months? Are there any precautions Id need to take?
Its goin to be fine. Humid and hot is bad only for people (OK the sweating thing) dry and hot is worse, and the GS handled Sacramento summers (hot and dry ... ) just fine for me many yaers ago. Humidity increases conductivity of air as well as its thermal capacity. Partly why dry heat feels better than humid heat.
Cool.
Srinath.
As much as I hate to disagree with you, Srinath....
The thermal capacity and conductivity of dry air has almost nothing to do with why a 'dry' heat feels 'better' than a humid heat.
The reason is the evaporation rate of water.. in this case, specifically the sweat from your skin. I don't have the requisite set of water/steam tables in front of me, but suffice it to say that when the air is humid, it becomes saturated or 'filled' with so much water that it cannot hold anymore.... which *vastly* reduces the rate at which sweat (even minute drops) evaporates off of your skin.
The large amount of moisture dissolved in the air is also why humid environments feel 'sticky'
The evaporation of sweat is what cools you down... so in a dry heat where the air readily accepts evaporating water vapor, your body transfers a lot more heat to the surrounding air in a much shorter amount of time.
Relative humidity is actually measured by looking at the contrasting temperatures of a 'wet' and a 'dry' bulb.
-kevin (who may not be able to crunch numbers like he used to, but still remembers a bit'o theory from those chem.engineering classes)
I live in south florida and have had no problems. :thumb:
The F model has an additional oil cooler as well.