How Hot Does Your Bike Run???

It finally got up into the 90's the last few days here in MN. My 1100 gets smokin hot at the stop lights and moving in rush hour traffic. I don't have a infrared heat gun back yet. (mine was stolen) . What do you guys see for engine temps on warm summer days? My exhaust chrome has a slight gold color at where it turns down, but not blue I think thats good .... Right.

Thanks
MN

 

After a good long ride on a recent mid 70's day, the back side of my block (below the intake ports) was a bit over 300 degrees Fahrenheit.

 

converted to fuel injection with Microsquirt and a bunch of home-made pieces.
thread insert helicoil

 

There is a trick in the R/C world to drop a droplet of water on the cylinder head of a small two stroke R/C motor (30k RPM... yes... awesome)
And if it boils off within 3 seconds, you are too hot. If it takes longer, 5-10 seconds, you are OK. And longer than 10, you are too cold.

Would take some messing around with, and maybe an eyedropper onboard... but might be worth looking into?

 

I use a cooking or meat thermometer set behind the #2 plug to watch temps while Colortuning and syncing, but it's not the true head temp.
I shut down at 220* which might really be 275 ??

 

When they're on sale, or, in some cases, if you print out the price from their web site, Harbor Freight has an IR spot digital thermometer for $29. That's what I used to calibrate my block temp sensor and make spot checks.

I'd be very interested to know what temps others are seeing.

Googling around, I didn't find much, since most people are discussing oil temp rather than head or block temp. I did find one article stating 370 to 400 degrees F as being reasonable head temp for a hot Lycoming engine (air-cooled aircraft engine).

I measured about 405 at the exhaust ports, but the top of the head was much cooler.

Cheers,
Paul

 

So Paul, can you borrow the li'l lady's cooking thermometer, place it on top and compare your IR reading to the cheesy meat thermometer?
We might be on to something, as anyone can buy a cheap $4.00 thermometer.

 

Good call! Let's do it I'm down.

 

Given the fact that you're suggesting taking a thermomenter that's designed to be embedded in meat and instead laying it on top of metal, I don't expect we'll get the most useful data here. Then there are the differences between accuracy of thermometers and conductivity of their stems.

Are you suggesting I buy a $4 thermometer, calibrate it versus my IR unit, then ship it around to people along with a picture of how and where to lay it on the engine? That's about the only way I think we'll get reasonably comparable information out of this.

 

i'll get some temps this weekend with my Fluke IR temp gun. the damn thing is calibrated to some stupid small number (1/100th of a degree).

 

SQL is right on that note - all the cheap thermometers are not calibrated well.

Some of them even hide the adjustment inside.