what up guys it's adrian from YouMotorcycle i'm going to do a super quick video talking about air
cooled versus liquid cooled motorcycles. If you're asking this question i'm assuming you're probably
buying a motorcycle and you want to figure out why do we need cooling, how are they different, which
one's better, which one's right for me and which one would that guy on youtube pick? So that's what
i'm gonna be answering and i'm gonna break it up into different little chapters so if you look on
the little timeline down here somewhere you can click ahead to whatever part is most relevant
to you, because i'm gonna start with this in a really simple fashion why do we need it? Well if
you think about any machine whether it's a motor vehicle or even just a laptop they have fans they
have ways of cooling things down. Anytime you're burning anything whether it's electrical energy or
gasoline making a bunch of explosions you got to keep things cool because things get too
hot they seize together they break they wear out prematurely you don't want that to happen
you got to have some sort of cooling for your motorcycle. So now we're going to talk about what
the differences are between air cooled versus liquid cooled motorcycles so we can understand
which one's better. Well let's start with how they work differently. Air-cooled motorcycles
if you look at one it's basically there's a bunch of little fins. All those fins are called cooling
fins and what happens is cooling fins create more surface area. Why do we want more surface area?
Well air cooled bikes work by air passing over the engine and cooling it as you're riding. The
more surface area you have the more heat there is they can get hit by air which can make the heat
dissipate which can make the whole machine run cooler. But liquid cooled motorcycles are very
different liquid cooled motorcycles instead they have more stuff going on. They have
radiators and they have thermostats and they have little tunnels inside of them where coolant goes
through so almost like a little sewer system of coolant that just passes through the tubes inside
of your motor so that when there's hot areas and a cool liquid passes over them it's kind of like
hitting your wrist with the hose on a hot summer day cools down the rest of your body that's sort
of the same idea with how liquid cooling works. So what are the pros and cons of each? Well let's
start with air cool bikes. Air cooled pro: really simple and straightforward there's not a lot
going on there there's not a lot of extra stuff that can break. Con: you're kind of dependent on
being moving you're kind of dependent on there being wind. If you're going to be stuck in traffic
you run a risk of overheating, and i know there's a lot of guys who say i run an air-cooled harley
through the desert all day long at a million and six thousand degrees and i've never overheated,
and i think you're missing the key point is that you are riding through the desert. If you are
riding through the desert you have air you have movement you have the breeze even if it's warm
air it's not thousands of degrees warm like it is inside your motor, where things are exploding and
being set on fire, so even hot desert air is actually cooler than inside your motor,
that's why air cooled bikes work in the desert. Air-cooled bikes do not work so well in the city
where you're stuck in bumper-to-bumper gridlock in a city like LA, New York, Toronto, etc. yeah So
let's talk about the pros and cons of liquid cool bikes well liquid cooled bikes obviously if you're
stuck in a very densely populated area and you're just going bumper to bumper traffic they are still
going to cool. You're going to hear the fan coming on, some of them even have little temperature
gauges, so you'll see that your bike is never getting too hot which is kind of nice to see.
You'll have less heat radiating off of your bike making you hotter while you're sitting in traffic
so that's pretty cool. They do say that liquid cooled bikes tend to last longer and the reason
is because there's less wear on gaskets and stuff things are not overheating as much things are not
being subjected to such extreme temperatures, so in theory a liquid-cooled bike could last longer
that's really going to depend on a case-by-case basis though i'll give you that much. Downsides:
liquid cool bikes add more complexity so we have thermostat those can break trust me i've had to
pay for those on on my jeep actually yeah that was not fun. Speaking of jeeps you guys like my new
background jeep thing check that out let me know in the comments if you like it or not. Is it lame?
i'm gonna probably hang on the wall. Let me know if it's lame. All right yeah more cons of liquid
cool bikes you have more stuff, more complexity, more things that could break. Your rad could
break, your rad could get damaged, your coolant i think you have to replace that every like
7000 miles something like that so it's not a it's not like a big job but it is something that
to worry about to do versus air-cooled bikes you don't have any maintenance so those are kind
of your pros and cons. Now the next topic is of course which one is best for you and then we're
going to talk about which one i prefer. So in terms of what's best for you, i think i've made it
pretty clear by now if you are somebody who you live in a city like new york you live in a city
like LA, you live somewhere with crazy traffic personally i would recommend a liquid-cooled bike.
However if you live pretty much anywhere else really, an air-cooled bike is not the
end of the world. Myself personally what would i pick? Honestly I'll put it to you like this:
once upon a time i was a university student and i always wanted a harley sportster so i sold my
liquid cooled suzuki boulevard m50 and i bought an air-cooled harley-davidson sportster, and my dad
was in and out of hospitals in downtown toronto, and i was working two jobs in downtown toronto,
and i was a university student in downtown toronto, and i hated my sportster. I thought
i would love it I thought it was my dream bike and i hated it because of how miserable i was because
i was just stuck in gridlock stop and go traffic on an air-cooled bike and it sucked and what did
i do? I sold my air-cooled harley-davidson and i bought another liquid-cooled suzuki boulevard.
However now i never have to go downtown i never have to get into the downtown core,
so at this point in my life i would be totally okay with an air-cooled bike, and there's another
thing, this is kind of a bonus because i think i covered everything i said i was going to but
here's a bonus - my door just slammed shut on me - here's kind of a bonus: air-cooled motorcycles
can also be equipped with oil coolers. Oil coolers are a little bit of a different thing, there are
all kinds of other things like harley has liquid cooled heads where just the head is liquid-cooled
of the cylinder but oil coolers will help to cool your oil a little bit. In my opinion this extra
stuff is not great and here's why: whether it's like oil coolers for triumphs for ducati monsters
for all that kind of stuff, while you get a little bit of the cooling benefit, not as much as if you
had a proper liquid cooled motorcycle, you have all of the cons of having a liquid cooled bike,
of more complexity of having a rad and thermostat and whatever maybe just not a fan but you have
all the other stuff in gizmos. If you got some extra stuff whatever that's fine that's okay too
basically i would make this decision based on how much you like the bike you're looking at what the
price is how well the bike's been looked after and especially on where and how you're gonna be riding
it. My name is Adrian from YouMotorcycle.com if you like this video please hit like if you have
any questions about air cooled like cool bikes or questions about anything motorcycle related
that you would like answered please leave them for me down in the comments i love answering all you
guys questions and i'm a big nerd so i'll probably if i don't know the answer i'll probably look it
up and write a whole book report um yeah if you want more motorcycle content aimed at helping
you guys uh please hit subscribe and thank you guys for helping me grow my channel thanks peace