A Cool(ing) Experiment
Here’s an experiment I did to evaluate coolants for my Sprint.
My Sprint is one of those that emits a lot of heat. That’s nice when the weather’s cool but can become uncomfortable on extended trips in warm weather. It's particularly noticeable riding in town or traffic when the fan kicks in and sends a blast of hot air across my legs and nads. Riding in 103ºF (39ºC) Arizona heat with riding gear is never going to be comfortable but on road trips in that area it almost qualifies as pain.
I’ve taken a number of steps to improve cooling and, when I was having my bike set up on the dyno, Wayne at Power-Tripp suggested I try some
Link Removed coolant additives. I used two products - Cooling System Protector and Radiator Cooler. Either product will perform fine on its own but Wayne was interested in results using ½ bottle of each JB product and distilled water.
Justice Brothers products did well in but I wanted to see how it compared to the
Link Removed that I was already using. Observing bars on the temp gauge wouldn’t be accurate enough so I decided to run the tests at idle and compare how much fan operation would occur with each coolant. I hooked up TuneECU to monitor fan operation and coolant temperature.
Starting with the Engine Ice that I’ve been using for a while I fired up my bike and let it idle until the fan cut in at 103ºC coolant temperature. I timed each fan-on, fan-off cycle. Fan-on duration increased with each cycle until the third fan-on cycle when coolant temperature settled around 105ºC (7 bars on the temp gauge) and fan operation was continuous. I took a few temperature measurements around the engine. After 17 minutes running in this state there was no movement in coolant temperature reading so I decided to stop there.
Next up was distilled water with ½ bottle of each JB product. From the same start point I again timed each fan-on, fan-off cycle. Straight away there was a noticeable difference with the first few fan-on cycles being much shorter than previous. Fan operation brought the temperatures down more effectively and it wasn’t until the 7th fan-on cycle that heat buildup resulted in continuous fan operation. Once again I let it run in this state for the same 17 minutes until I saw a consistent coolant temp reading. At that point TuneECU was indicating coolant temp of 101ºC – that’s 6 bars on the temp gauge and pretty close to the point where the fan would switch off although it never quite got there. Strangely, exhaust pipe temps were up slightly although other temps were down.
I've posted a table below showing durations of the fan-on, fan-off cycles and recorded temperature. I was surprised by how noticeable the difference was using different coolants. At idle, with no airflow other than the system fan, the end result was a lot of heat in the engine but it took
13 minutes longer to reach that state using the JB additives. That’s impressive. I expect that to translate to less heat in normal riding and less fan operation in traffic. I’m going to use this “special brew” for an upcoming road trip to the west coast and through summer. For winter I will add some anti-freeze. Cooling will be slightly less effective but winter protection is essential and excess heat will not be a problem during Missouri winter.
A big thanks to Wayne at
Power-Tripp Performance for working with me on this and for providing the Justice Brothers Cooling System Protector and Radiator Cooler. Anyone who’s read his posts on the ECM & FI Tuning forum will know he brings a lot of knowledge and experience to our forums.
Results:
