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This may be a stupid question - air cooled engines? This may be a stupid question - air cooled engines?
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Photo by Marc Gibaud, Clouds on Tres Cerros and Mount Fitzroy, Argentinian Patagonia

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Photo by Marc Gibaud,
Clouds on Tres Cerros and
Mount Fitzroy, Argentinian Patagonia



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Old 18 Oct 2012
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Andy, given the number of dishwasher repair men, machine operators and others who claim the title of engineer I’d suggest being more specific. For example in my case I would say I was a graduate manufacturing engineer working in process improvement as a six sigma black belt.

For Walkabout, a different answer:

I worked in the automotive industry for 13 years up to five years ago. My take on this would ignore the usual biker fixation with specific technologies. A Toyota Landcruiser (water cooled) will statistically prove more reliable in a long range travel environment than any bike. Sensible comparison though is close to impossible as comparable numbers just don’t exist. I would start my efforts on this by looking at:
· Intended use. If you exceed the design specification things will start to fail at an increasing rate. From the consumers point of view it is difficult to spot bikes actually designed for this type of use. Small capacity MX type machines are designed to race, so short , high power runs followed by any required maintenance, not carrying a lot of kit for a long distance. Larger machines may have off road style but are honestly expected to be used on sunny weekends and the odd two week holiday. Old machines may have had an expected design life that is now over, or the designer may have been useless and spent a fortune providing 40 year life parts for a 7 year life design.

· Design aspects that potentially detract from our requirement (electronic security systems etc.) I would say should count against a product. We need a cooling system though.

· Stability of design. Engineers, regardless of robust processes and taking the first point into account cannot find every issue until the product is used. Any new bike will have some sort of issue and the customers will find it. How this is dealt with varies with company culture, size and processes.

· Age of design and materials. We no longer see the sorts of obvious leaps and bounds they had in mechanical and electrical products even 30 years ago. What is changing rapidly is manufacturing techniques and materials. New designs can be more ambitious and without failures in their intended use because a component that used to be injection moulded and at risk of melting is now sintered ceramic. Things like 3D printing are going to allow shapes of component that were production impossibilities on older designs. These will be more robust and have higher performance.

· Where the design spec is met by sealed for life items, removing maintenance access is perfectly logical. Where this is not met, good design should make maintenance easy. Only where there are process failures will a semi-sealed design fail and require access.

· Robust process. The Japanese are the worlds best manufacturers. They have had detailed, naturally stable processes for almost every aspect of production for 60 years. A boutique manufacturer using non-automotive suppliers in small numbers cannot have the sort of process that simply does not make mistakes at any significant level. The root cause of the Ural subframe failure will almost certainly be related to a small production workshop relying on worker skill and inspection. Ural cannot insist the welding is done on a computer controlled process with statistical controls in place, the numbers are too small. Other manufacturers have adopted the Japanese techniques and some adapted them to other cultures but less experience still has an effect.


I therefore see no real argument in favour of either cooling system. A well executed water cooling system is more efficient. The well executed requirement is more likely to be a modern but proven design by a Japanese manufacturer or large manufacturer using Japanese techniques. Where the well executed design, working to an overland specification does not exist, air cooling can be meet many aspects of the requirement albeit at lower performance.


Basically, let someone with more money than sense do the testing on something fairly modern from a large manufacturer with a good reputation and don’t worry about what’s inside. Know how to fix what can be fixed and have the right tools , it isn't rocket science regardless.

Andy
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