OilBud Oil Cooler Test: How Hot Does Your Bike Get in Stop and Go Traffic?

Hi, my name is Bud Clarke. I own the OilBud company, and today we're going to conduct an idle test. I'm going to test how hot a motorcycle can get without an oil cooler, or without using the OilBud oil cooler, just by idling. I bet it’ll reach around 295 to 300 degrees Fahrenheit in an hour. Then, we’ll install the oil cooler and repeat the same test to compare the results.

We’re going to take the adapter off and just put the filter on the bike. Then, we’ll let it run for an hour and see what temperatures we get.

We’re starting the bike to see how hot it gets in an hour. It’s about 1:30 in the afternoon, and the ambient temperature is 96.3 degrees. We’ll put the thermometer in the oil tank, start the bike, and go from there.

After an hour, the temperature reached 304.5 degrees Fahrenheit. The oil tank on the Harley is showing around 304.7 degrees as well. This demonstrates how hot the bike can get when sitting idle, especially in stop-and-go traffic. I’ve done this test three or four times with different motorcycles, and the results have been consistent. I haven’t tested it with the M8 engine yet, but I suspect the results will be similar. Now, we’re shutting the bike down to let it cool off.

We’ve shut down the bike, and we’ll let it cool overnight. Tomorrow, when the temperature is similar, we’ll redo the test with the oil cooler installed and see what difference it makes.

It’s time for the second part of our test. The outside temperature is a little warmer than yesterday. We’ve installed the oil cooler on the bike, and we’re starting it up. We’ll check the temperature after about half an hour and again after an hour to see how it compares.

It’s been about an hour now, so let’s check the temperatures. The gauge shows 214.8 degrees, though it’s a bit hard to read in the sun, so let’s call it around 215 degrees. The other gauge in the oil tank shows about 240 degrees.

In conclusion, I’ve got a few things to note. First of all, I had to change the oil after the first day because 305 degrees is just too hot for your oil. The heat also fried my battery; it was a couple of years old, but the excessive heat destroyed it. This is what too much heat can do: it can damage your electronics, your engine, and everything else.

So, it’s really important to keep that oil cool. In this idle test, we saw an 80 to 85-degree difference between the bike with and without the oil cooler. This is why you need a good oil cooler, and OilBud is an excellent choice.

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