Yamaha V-Star, question to the owners

 Hi,

Have you ever experienced problems due to fact, that your bike is not liquid
cooled?
I'd like to buy v-Star as my beginner bike, but lack of liquid cooling
somehow turning me off.

 jazu wrote:


Didn't you ask this question before?

Yamaha air-cooled V-twins have been around since the early 1980's, and I've
never heard of any problem with overheated broken down Viragos littering the
roadside.

About 1998, Yamaha started dropping the Virago name in favor of the V-Star
name and has built a new reputation for reliability and service by starting a
new company, just like Honda did with Acura, Toyota with Lexus, and Nissan
did with Infiniti.

Do engines really need to be liquid cooled? The engineers can get a little
better gas mileage with a liquid cooled engine, they can jet the carburetor a
little leaner to meet the EPA air pollution requirements, but that only works
as long as the cooling system keeps the engine cool enough to avoid pinging.

It helps a lot if you design the motorcycle with a great big radiator and a
large capacity cooling system.

Harley Davidson has such a humongous radiator on their 1100cc V-Rod, but it
is conceled behind a stylish cover with air scoops.

Cruiser riders really don't like the idea of an ugly radiator on their
motorcycle, and if the radiator is made smaller so it doesn't look so bad,
but all it does is stabilize the engine temperature for a very short time in
traffic before a fan has to come on the cool the engine.

Then the rider is going to look at the temperature gauge and wonder what it
means when the water temperature gets up around 260 degrees.

If you want to keep the water temperature down to a reasonable 230 degrees or
so, you need a huge, car-like radiator, or you need a motorcycle that never
stops moving, never getting stuck in traffic.

And the air-cooled Virago and V-Star engines probably have enough finning to
stabilize the oil temperature at around 250 degrees or so.

But, who knows how hot they get? I've never heard of anybody putting an oil
temperature gauge on a Virago or adding an oil cooler. If it doesn't have a
cooler on it from the factory, the engineers aren't worried, why should you
worry?

Some petroleum engineers said that you should shorten your mineral oil change
intervals by half for every ten degrees over 240 degrees your engine oil gets.


Using that thinking, I once figured that I should change my Suzuki's oil
every 100 miles when I was racing in 105 degree heat and the oil temperature
was getting close to 300 degrees. The normal oil change interval is every
3500 to 4000 miles.Z

OTOH, Honda CB900F engines used to heat their oil up to 315 degrees and
somebody at a motorcycle magazine pointed out that there weren't a bazillion
smoking broken CB900F's littering the road, either.

So, if you want to buy an air-cooled engine and you're worried about it
overheating, just fill it with your favorite synthetic oil and change that
oil as often as you like. If you like the styling buy it for the style and
enjoy it.

--
Message posted via http://www.motorcyclekb.com

 

No I didn't. I did ask about front wheel size once.

Thank you so much for your very valuable reply
j

 Thanks for reply


I read this. My question was more about cooling system than asking what kind
of bike to buy.

 jazu wrote:


I am not a V-star owner, but I demo'd a few. The 650 Classic
felt overweight and underpowered. I couldn't imagine why
they didn't make a 750 to compete with Honda's Shadow.

The Silverado shook so badly that I never even got out of
the parking lot; I just turned around and gave it back
to the salesman. He said the vibration was from the rigid
mount motor.

Then I tried a RoadLiner. If I wanted a Yamaha v-twin
this would be the one (or the StratoLiner touring version).

YMMV.

Sean_Q_