My wife is hot.

 

When your crankcase oil approaches the 350+ degree mark for very long, the properties of your oil are going to start going south fairly fast. If you want to know how "hot" is too hot then you will want to shut her down and park it when the fins on the cylinders start to smoke. Now, that is hot. Before it gets to that point the bike will be running ragged as hell because of pre-detonation and such, so there will be no doubt that it is too hot. When you twist the throttle to accelerate, it will bog down and clatter. Again, you will not be in doubt. A situation where you are stuck in 100 degree weather in a traffic jam will bring on extreme temperatures in a few minutes. Believe it or not I have actually seen people who were sitting still in a traffic jam and not moving at all who were constantly cleaning out their pipes, almost as if they thought they had a water pump on their air cooled engine.

If you begin to smell the engine and then see traces of white smoke coming off your fins you would be well advised to pull to the side and shut her down. Often times you will begin to have clutch problems when it is extremely hot. There are plenty of warning signs that you are fast approaching a critical situation so you will not be in doubt. If you do get in a situation like the above the best thing to do when you get it home would be to do a complete swap off all fluids, just to be safe. The modern day Harley is incredibly tough when it comes to heat. They are after all an "air cooled" engine and the design engineers who are responsible for them are quite aware of that fact.

 

This is hot

 

well seems like 300 would be the number to worry about , I have a 07 Ultra , 96'' motor and oil cooler , 240 was plenty hot on the legs so don't know if I would ever make 300 but atleast I have a # to watch , did not know if 250 - 260 was hot or not so now I have a # , thanks

 

My bike is stock, except the cats are removed from stock header. Limited comes stock with oil cooler. Oh I do have Wards Works thermostat in it also. Got a set of fans on the way.
I want to do a Dyno tune but still saving the coins for exhaust, tuner and dyno time. My dealer says Stage 1 is waste of money if I plan to do a dyno tune.
I try to stay out of traffic and it was not real bad that day, one cycle of the light we all got through the light. Red light, then 45 MPH for a mile or so, after a few like that, it started heating up, and the ETMS shut down back cylinder, then I shut if off at the red lights. But what might have contributed to it...we were running 75-80 on a four lane for 4 hours straight before that at 242 oil temp.

 

I was adjusting my Tmax computer settings today. 91 degrees outside. the bike was running on it's stand while I made the adjustments. 322 degrees with the parade fan off and 295 with the parade fan on. yes I have an oil cooler. bike was not in motion.

 

The oil temp was 276 according to the digital dipstick gauge when I got home from ridding today low 90's and humid in southern NY today. Combination local and highway ridding. As long as it stays under 300 I'm not going to worry. These engines can take it.

 

damn...back on track.

 

I have a 2012 FLHTC. (103 CI) I have added, SE254e Cams, SE air cleaner, 4" Rinehart slip on's, SE Super Tuner Pro and an after market Oil Temp Gauge. (Roger McEwin) It came stock with an oil cooler. By my oil temp gauge, it will run about 250*-260* at speeds of 70 mph, which I don't normally run on the highway. I like to run at 80 plus. When I do run 80 plus, the temp goes up to damn near 300*.... I freak and pull over and cool her down for about a good 30 min's. When it gets that hot, going slower or continuing on DOES NOT cool the thing down... My oil cooler is hot, so I know the oil is going thru it. The dealership I use (rated #3 out of 637 dealerships in service dept) and trust, the service manager even says that is to hot. It should be running about 180*-190*... He says it may be the aftermarket gauge is off. Hell, if it was off 50* that would be higher than what he says it would be. I reached 200* and pulled into a friends auto repair shop and got his fancy thermal heat gun-gauge thingy and shot it into the oil tank. It read 200*.. So i think its pretty dang close at the higher temps too. Would a Jagg oil cooler do that much better? Running at mid-night the temp is about 230. Maybe 75* weather.. Any ideas, anyone??? I watch the gauge as much as the road in fear of burning up the damn thing. Kinda ruins the trip when you have to pull over every 30-45 min's.. Pisses me off really!

 

Great question..have been wondering myself how hot is to hot. Last year stuck in traffic my stock TC88 was so hot it started to idle funny. Traffic was one way so I turned around and slowly rode to get some air over the engine. Within 3 miles bike was cooled down and running normal. I really thought I did some damage. My Syn3 oil looked fine but really do not know how bad the heat degraded the oil.I did have to replace the rear rocker box gaskets due to a small leak.