V rod Rad System

[rbabos]

For all that think the v rod radiator is a work of art,  is wrong with you. We've all been led down the garden path with how well this thing is engineered. BS. First off Willy G had a serious mental block with rads which led the team on a rediculous path to attain satisfactory cooling. First nonsense argument was the front wheel would block air and not cool. Really? I've not seen a single Jap bike not cool, or for that matter air heads from air not getting around the front tire and fender. By feeding air in from the outer edges this did create flow problems through the core. Those added nasa style turbulators are nothing but air dams but needed for function. Air gets in easier but has trouble getting back out. Some compresssion of air takes place forcing it through the core. Bottom line is it works, not great however and nowhere as good as the full core exposed to incoming air. This places a high duty on the fans in the city or slow speeds. Fans only pull air from the center area of the rad and no shrouding to increase the efficiency. While they work, they need to run a long time to drop temps to the min fan temp. Normally it all works fine, but with the stupid heat and humidiy recently I've seen 220 temp coming up my street. Fans kick in at 215 so you can see the system was overwhelmed. I let it idle at 220 and around 2-3 minutes it dropped to 205. Temps drop pretty quick when going down the road however. They must have tested this in a dry heat desert. High humidity kills cooling big time. With all the heat and humidity testing this, I rate it as marginal, not specfkgtacular for a cooling system regarless of how MoCo praised this . I bet the design team was glad to get Willy off their backs by coming up with a work around to a normal approach.
Ron

[brunothedog]

There should be no problem taking the Rad cover off then, mine has been off for a few months and i really didn't notice a difference though, but we haven't had shearing heat and humidity yet

[rbabos]

There should be no problem taking the Rad cover off then, mine has been off for a few months and i really didn't notice a difference though, but we haven't had shearing heat and humidity yet

It would speed cooling when moving, that's all. Went for a ride today, about 70* and bone dry air. Hell, thermostat barely opened the whole trip. Showing 180 most of the time, with 185 as the normal t stat start to open point and fully open at 215. Humidity has a major effect on cooling efficiency given todays example. It's an odd thermostat too with it's huge range of function. Cars generally hold +/-3 degrees where the v rod floats between 185-215 most of the time depending on ambient and air flow and how much heat rpms are pumping in.
Ron