Is the engine temp and oil temp around the same when at idle? I installed my Power Vision the other day and have setup the gauges. One of the gauges was for engine temperature. Is it normal to have a engine temp of 315 degrees or is the gauge giving a flase reading? I'm checking the engine temp not the oil temp.

 

Engine temp and oil temp are two different measurements. The engine temp is actually the cylinder head temp (CHT) and your 315 reading, while maybe not desireable, is actually quite typical at idle.

Engine temp (CHT) can change quite rapidly while oil temp changes are much more gradual.

Do you have a portable fan? Bring it out to your bike, turn it on, direct the airflow at your engine and watch how quickly the engine temp will change.

Many of us run engine cooling fans on our bikes to prevent these high idle temperatures... https://www.hdforums.com/forum/tourin...test-data.html

And here's a thread of another fan system that many are using and looks really nice... https://www.hdforums.com/forum/tourin...tem-again.html

 

My 08 FLHX runs about 221*engine temp going down the highway @75 or so and gets up around 251* in town driving. My oil temp stays between 180* and 220*. I also have an HD oil cooler. You didn't specify when you were getting your 315* reading (ie.. Idling in the garage). If you're running that hot on the open road it sounds like you're way to lean.

 

Idling in the garage...

 

Thats your front head CHT, sounds normal, from a cold start it should should have taken about 12-14 minutes to get there on a stock tune.

 

OT and ET (FCHT reported by the PV) can be 100° apart or even more. OT tends to fluctuate slowly while ET can do so quite rapidly. I've seen ET of >300° while OT is still around 200°, although the latter will climb if ET stays this high. I would try to keep your ET down below 300° if possible, although higher is fairly typical in summer gridlock. I have the HD oil cooler and the Ward FCS, and together they keep ET and OT at very sane levels. Here's what I'm seeing with this set-up in summer weather (>90°):

────────────────────── OT ──────── ET───────────────────

Idle, FCS fans on ───────── 205° ───── 235-245° ───────────────
Max observed, fans on ───── 225° ────── 250° ─────────────────
Normal city, fans on ─────── 205° ───── 230-240° ───────────────
Highway ────────────── 200-205° ─── 225-235° ───────────────

────────────────────────────────────────────────── ────

BTW, I've done quite a bit of testing using different AFR's, and running leaner does not make much difference in either ET or OT. Going from 14.6:1 to 13.8:1 showed an improvement of 7° for ET while OT showed no change. I'm currently running 14.5:1 in the cruise range (14.0:1 at idle) and the temps above reflect these settings.

 

Thanks for the info thus far. I will keep a watch on the temp and may add a fan this summer.