Oil cooler from a gs500 on a gs450?

[Guest]

I know that the gs450 would need to undergo modification

I know that I don't necessarily need it

What I am thinking is that this will help on hotter days when I'm stuck in traffic going back and forth to campus. I started to overheat this past summer and immediately shut down and hung around on the side of the parking lot we call the 408 here. Lane splitting is illegal of course, because passing cars that are doing 5mph while we are doing 10mph is highly dangerous.

SO! My thought is that maybe a small oil cooler would help alleviate some of the heat.
Has anyone heard of anyone doing this or maybe has done it?
My thought is to go through how the gs500 crankcase is done and see if I can modify the 450 to have the same journals for the oil in and out. Otherwise I can probably pick up a cheap bottom end of a gs500 (or **** it and get the whole motor since I want to put the 500 cylinders on my older motor anyway)

[tkent02]

An oil cooler with no airflow won't cool any better than cooing fins on the engine with no airflow.

[John Park]

An oil cooler with no airflow won't cool any better than cooing fins on the engine with no airflow.

I think what he needs is a fan. I'm also curious as to what led him to think it was overheated. Probably started to run kooky when the float bowls started to boil.

The GS500F oil pan has different plumbing; it might fit a 450. They added a cooler when they put bodywork on the bike and found that it didn't cool so well. I doubt that it solved any actual overheating problems other than keeping the oil a bit cooler and throwing some hot air at the head. The 500 heads have what appears to be worse cooling than the 450 and having the exhaust pipes more inboard was no help either. The 500 jug has a smaller air passage next to the tunnel as well. IOW, I think the 450 is actually a better design.

The 500 block will have the shift drum backwards from a 450; kinda cool if you can utilize the rear facing lever, but a major pain to the exchange the drum.

[TxGSrider]

An oil cooler with no airflow won't cool any better than cooing fins on the engine with no airflow.

Im not agreeing or disagreeing on this statement, but wouldn't just the extra volume of oil and whatever amount of heat it would lose to the air through the lines and cooler (even without air circulating over the fins) still help to lower the oil temps at least some?

[Boba]

Yes, no airflow is no airflow, but even standing still the fins would shed some excess heat. I already had some small 12v fans in mind. Anyway, I've already scratched the idea. I do want to put in a temp sensor though just to monitor to know when I need to shut down or at least when I need to take to the shoulder and start moving.

And yes, the added oil capacity alone would make a small difference, but once heat soaked, I'm heat soaked. The extra capacity is just more hot oil. At this point it almost makes more sense to put a water jug where my airbox used to be, wire in a couple of windshield washer pumps, and spray the motor fins with water.

It's 82°F at 12 noon here and it got up to 85°F yesterday. When summer hits in a few weeks and it climbs into the 300° range, I'm going to have to strap a wheeled ice chest to the back and stick the ice in the fins when I'm in the traffic. The good thing is that I can make my eggs on the go simply by holding a small cast iron pan in my hand and dropping in whatever I want to eat.

[Boba]

The GS500F oil pan has different plumbing; it might fit a 450. They added a cooler when they put bodywork on the bike and found that it didn't cool so well. I doubt that it solved any actual overheating problems other than keeping the oil a bit cooler and throwing some hot air at the head. The 500 heads have what appears to be worse cooling than the 450 and having the exhaust pipes more inboard was no help either. The 500 jug has a smaller air passage next to the tunnel as well. IOW, I think the 450 is actually a better design.

The 500 block will have the shift drum backwards from a 450; kinda cool if you can utilize the rear facing lever, but a major pain to the exchange the drum.

Yes, the gs500 is different. However the 450 bolts directly up to later models, I think 02 or 04 and up. 500 heads can't be used on a 450 anyway as the frame rails would be directly in front of the exhaust ports. So the 500 could be used up to the head, then the 450 head and top with the 500 carbs.

It was a thought that i had had and almost immediately decided against it.

I've a oil temp sensor and I'm going to use that to monitor and if it shows any signs to be concerned about I will pick up this idea of thermal control then.

And as far as why I thought I overheated, because my motor started smoking and chugging. The intake pipes were so soft that the carburetors were drooping (no brace or airbox) and I had to go through everything to see what damage there was. Fortunately just the oil was burnt, the intake pipes and o-rings I replaced, and since then I've cautiously lane split standstill traffic to get out to the end of the jam. December 14th and yesterday it got up to 85°-86°

it': 12:45 and already 83° out.

[John Park]

[QUOTE=Boba;2354351]Yes, no airflow is no airflow, but even standing still the fins would shed some excess heat. I already had some small 12v fans in mind. Anyway, I've already scratched the idea. I do want to put in a temp sensor though just to monitor to know when I need to shut down or at least when I need to take to the shoulder and start moving.

The hot air rises principle of stationary cooling [thermosiphon] only works if you have cool air available from below. As it is, the pavement preheats the air which then passes over the block and then passes by the cylinders with their forward facing fin [horizontal] structure thus pretty much rendering them useless.

The old Italian horizontal cylinder out the front [Honda 90] or the BMW out the side motors would cool by convection pretty well, but not this style. To its credit it cools quite well once moving, unlike the typical English twin, which relied upon twisty roads and a damp mist accumulating on the siamesed iron cylinder block.

The other solution is to take a different route which avoids the freeway.

[Boba]

The only other route to class is to literally drive the perimeter around Florida, or to take the main street through Orlando which is just as bad with traffic lights and cars.

https://www.google.com/maps/dir/Whispering+Oak+Elementary+School/University+of+Central+Florida/@28.5283402,-81.4304558,12z/data=!4m13!4m12!1m5!1m1!1s0x0:0x2dfb50883949bdb6!2m2!1d-81.6118134!2d28.5134859!1m5!1m1!1s0x0:0x5fd59b92b3c79bab!2m2!1d-81.2000599!2d28.6024274

Not sure if that link will work, but that is my route options and honestly, no matter how I go, it's traffic out the ass.

https://www.google.com/maps/dir/Whispering+Oak+Elementary+School/University+of+Central+Florida/@28.5817164,-81.4507118,12z/data=!4m19!4m18!1m10!1m1!1s0x0:0x2dfb50883949bdb6!2m2!1d-81.6118134!2d28.5134859!3m4!1m2!1d-81.5385832!2d28.6525713!3s0x88e79da2e0de7727:0x7eaf44fc82ed9546!1m5!1m1!1s0x0:0x5fd59b92b3c79bab!2m2!1d-81.2000599!2d28.6024274!3e0

I could always go this way, have coffee with Rick, and then continue on! LOL
But again, I will run into traffic jams.

[bwringer]

The GS500 models with the oil cooler use a different oil pan, but there are several differences in the oil routing in the cases as well, so you can't just slap on a GS500 oil pan and plumb in a cooler.

I learned all this while dissecting the horrible remains of two GS500 engines... the original owner had let engine #1 in his 2001 GS500 run low on oil, which cooked the rod bearings.

He had a shop install engine #2 from a 2005 GS500. The shop somewhat ignorantly slapped the 2001 oil pan (with no oil cooler fittings) onto the 2005 engine, figuring "they're all the same". I don't believe the owner even made it home before cooking another crank. Being rather dejected by these events, he soon sold the whole mess cheap to a friend of mine.

Upon autopsy, we found that the oil passages inside the 2005 cases were somewhat different than in the 2001 engine, and that using the 2001 oil pan on the 2005 engine simply blocked oil flow entirely.

We took the best bits of both engines, rustled up a good crank from t' intarwebz, and built one good engine. Since the 2001 bike didn't have an oil cooler, we used the 2005 pan with the 2005 cases and plugged the oil line fittings with drain plugs. I then drilled a bypass passage between the two chambers in the pan so oil could flow normally from one to the other. Last time I checked, that engine had many thousands more miles and was still going strong.

[Big Rich]

There is a guy over on the GSTwins forum from Germany that sells an oil cooler for.....well, really any GS bike. I can't remember all the details but his kit relocates (?) the oil filter and adds an oil cooler. His name is Jim Knopf - he is pretty easy to find with Google since he customizes a LOT of bikes.