The last round of EPA regs are killing our Harley's, all the 2010's now have catalytic converters in the headpipe. The Japanese bikes that try to copy Harley have built some metric water cooled that have some pretty clean lines. You have to look twice to notice the plumbing.

I believe the custom builder's may also lead the way in water cooling, they will use the frame, whatever to hide the plumbing!

It will have to be done, the metrics run good right out of the box and they can sit in traffic and idle on those hot days!

I will buy Harley at any rate, already got that oil cooler hanging on there and a Parade Fan! A little radiator ain't gonna kill the looks of a bagger anymore than the oil cooler does.

Times they are a changing!

 

Whatever it is, I hope it doesn't have anything bigger than a 180 rear tire.

 

four-wheeled HD baggers

 

Four wheel baggers with tops and air conditioning power windows,(oh wait that's a car) Bagger bobber combos Boggers! (damm cabin fever) two months to go.

 

 

Well now, this doesn't do anything for my enthusiasm as a first time Harley owner. I just picked up an '02 Ultra for what I thought was a great deal. (under 13k miles with lots chrome goodies for under $12,000)

 

[youtube]fBCF6El3h14[/youtube]

 

was that a harley emblem on his dog house?

 

I LOVE that trend! My wife rides a V-Star 1100, and she now wants a sportbike. I made a deal with her - she can have on if I can have one, too! I think that may happen! She used to ride with a women's group here, but kind of lost interest in that for some reason. We have a great time riding together... although I did have to learn to stop offering unwanted advice to her at stoplights... I was just trying to help, but wasn't! Sometimes she decides to ride on the back of mine tho, so she can just relax and enjoy the ride and look at the scenery. Either way is fine with me... I'd much rather have her with me than ride alone!

I also think that water cooling is inevitable, given the ever-more-onerous EPA regs. Water-cooled bikes have been around for decades now, and of course the MoCo already makes the V-Rod, so the technology isn't at all foreign to them. They could make a water-cooled big V-Twin easily if they really wanted to. I think the fact that they haven't yet is mere market positioning and corporate culture than it is the technical challenges of doing it.

I owned an '85 water-cooled Kawasaki ZL900 Eliminator in the 80s - it was a great bike, never came close to overheating even on the hottest summer days, and the black radiator up front didn't spoil the looks of the bike at all IMHO. The engine was all flat black, and the whole thing was much smaller in dimension that the same-displacement engine on my old air-cooled Z1. The cylinders had no fins at all on the cylinders - they were completely smooth - and the head had only very small ones that probably were only there for styling purposes.

Water-cooling is a much better way to remove engine heat than air-cooling is. Water absorbs about 3600 times the heat of an equivalent volume of air, so water-cooled engines can run much cooler and last much longer, twin cam heat problems could essentially just disappear, and they could get much bigger in displacement and still fit in the frame nicely. Cosmetically, the MoCo could make a water-cooled Big Twin look however they want it to - either retain the big fins for the "classic" Harley looks, or not.

An old engineer friend of mine once told me "If you were on fire, what would you want me to do? Throw water on you, or blow on you?"

 

had to watch it again but I think you may be right