In relation to motorbikes, what dose air cooled and water cooled relate to, how the engine is cooled ?

Question

just doing some research on what type of bike to get, pros and cons of each and something that keeps coming up is water or air cooled engine, which is better and why ??

Answer 1

generally air cooled bikes have a bigger barrel size[not bore] with lots of fins to aid in cooling...water cooled engines are generally smaller as water is pumped around the ''jacket'' to aid cooling....i prefer the water cooled engine but air cooled engines ''look'' more like and engine...if you know what i mean.

Answer 2

air cooled bikes just use ambient air (or sometimes a fan, depending on the bike) to get hot air away from the engine.  they don't have a radiator and fluid running through to get the heat off the engine.

a liquid cooled bike has a radiator and plumbing to move and cycle liquid to and from the engine from radiator where it dissipates heat by air cooling or fans blowing onto the radiator

Answer 3

air cooled pro/liq cooled con

extra maintenance for coolant changes

potential for repairs (rad, waterpump, hoses, etc)

extra weight

bad head gasket can cost you an entire engine if coolant gets in oil

air cooled con/liq cooled pro

safer to idle/stuck in heavy traffic in high ambient temperatures (90+)

longer engine life

looks are subjective, i prefer without a big ugly rad

Answer 4

neither is better then the other, they both have their advantages...

with air cooled is fine for smaller engines, you don't have to worry that the coolant is flowing around like it should, you don't have to worry that it doesn't have enough coolant....

larger engines greatly benifit (from both performance and life expectancy) from liquid cooling... and it's basicly the same as the coolant system in your car.... just the parts look diffrent, and it's on a smaller scale.  

Answer 5

There no difference ,other than maintenance, for one over the other. The benefits of water cooling are with regard to the compactness of design and improved dissipation of heat, more of a problem with bigger engines and water cooling ha a benefit with regard to damping engine noise. On the older air cooled engines the 2 middle bores on a 4 cylinder had to have plenty of meat between them to dissipate heat because they were shielded from cooling air by the front wheel and also with them being in the middle of the engine they have only 2 cooling surfaces (front/back) while the outer ones have 3 (front/middle/side).with a four its common to have smaller jet sizes in the middle carbs to run them a little cooler as well.