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[Fed68]

The fans do suck air through the cooler and do not blow through it.  How much it may effect the clogging of the cooler I won't know till this next riding season.  Like Pete and Mano said...just by doing this install I will be removing the cooler every winter and cleaning them as part of my winter maintenance. 

[longlast]

The fans do suck air through the cooler and do not blow through it.  How much it may effect the clogging of the cooler I won't know till this next riding season.  Like Pete and Mano said...just by doing this install I will be removing the cooler every winter and cleaning them as part of my winter maintenance. 

    I thought you would have installed them sucking the air. Who knows you may find with the fans the oil
    cooling fins just may keep clearer with the increased air flow muck may not build up as much.

    You do have a good practical thought there, do you know of this being done in the past? One other thing
    I was wondering about, have you wired the fans to an independent on/off or not?
   
    Cheers Pete

   

[Fed68]

There was two ways of ordering the fans.  You could get them to wire up to a temperature sensor that turned them on a certain temp or the way I got them that hooked up the accessory switch on the dash.  I am not worried about trying to cool more going down the road, as I do not think the fans will help much in that area.  I only wanted them for in town, stop light to stop light kind of driving.  I have not cleaned the cooler since I bought the bike new in 08.

[longlast]

  Wow first clean since 08 then that muck build up was not that bad from what could be seen in the photos.
  I would have expected a lot more do to the poisoning of the cooler. But like you say the main concern is in
  stop&go built up summer traffic. It to me in that respect makes a lot of seance to have the cooler fanned, same
  diff. as the rad in you car a fan cooling walter as apposed to a fan cooling an oil rad.
 
  Here in London it's not uncommon to take up to 2.5/3 or even 4 hrs to get 20 miles across the city.
  It will be intereasting to see a post from you this summer as to how thy work, and the temp before and after the
  fans are turned on. Have you tried just running the motor to get up to temp. and turning then on to see
  how much affect thy have in temp. drop would be much the same as stop & go ( just a thought)
 

[Midnight Rider]

There would be a number of reasons NOT to blow air through the oil cooler rather than pull it through, just one of which is that the fans would be fighting the air flow at anything other than a standstill.  Generally speakingit is more efficient to pull cooling air through a coil rather than push it through.  Just think of the cooling fans on your car...they pull air through both the condenser (A/C) and the radiator coil.  To blow in the other direction would be pulling air off the hot engine and moving it through the coil...not very efficient.  I could name other cases as well, but suffice it to say that the amount of extra debris sucked into the coil fins would be negligible.  Small particulate matter like dust might be pulled in more, but that washes off with a hose pipe when cleaning the bike.  Oil accumulates there because of the location of the damn filter on a Twin Cam.

[longlast]

You made some good points there Midnight. I git the point of the blowing through the cooler NOT being affective when riding. The two opposite air flows apposing each other "correct not effective", but Feb68's main objective is in town/city stop&go traffic. My thought is what the increase of dirt being sucked in by the fans comming from the front wheel as apposed to no suction while in slower moving conditions. As for the blowing in those said conditions ,there is the heat as you stated pulling hot air from the engine. that's why I made the query I relay don't know as to how hot the air would be down at the bottom of the crank causing. Being the cooler being mounted on the out side of the frame. I know what your saying also on the A/C and radiators but also bear in mind there some what more then 6" away from the crud of the road. Feb68 did say the fans are switched. I don't doubt the fans will be effective. I've just been throwing around other options  and sanerials to get opinions as to work out witch figuration may or my not give the best resalts after considering all the options. To help a problem on one hand could create one on the other hand. But that's just me I can't help my self, I've got to look,up,down,over,around and in between and then weigh out the options. I think Feb68 got a good idea.

[Midnight Rider]

Well, the placement of the HD oil cooler is probably not ideal in the first place because it does get stuff thrown at it from the front tire.  But, I've never heard of anyone here having a problem because of it.  It is possible for the fins to be bent by a rock or something being thrown up, but that's easily fixed.  Dust/dirt particles are going to pass through the coil fins rather easily, as they are not tightly spaced like those on your A/C condensing unit or evaporator coil.  But the fins can collect surface dust/dirt and should be cleaned/hosed off from time to time to maintain peak efficiency.  The amount of extra material sucked through the coils due to the fans being on would be negligible and would have little, if any effect on the need to clean things more frequently.  The larger problem with the cooler's location is the fact that when you pull the oil filter, it is very easy for oil to spill down into the area where the cooler resides, and difficult to clean without disassembling the cover and mounting plate as the OP did.  Residual oil certainly causes dirt particles to adhere to whatever surface it is on.

Just take a look at your A/C condensing unit (outside component) to see how dirty the fins on the condensing coil are.  Dust collects on the fins for sure, and should be hosed off once a year or so as part of maintaining your A/C unit's efficiency.  But it takes a good while for enough dirt/dust to adhere to the fins to cause any drastic decrease in operational efficiency due to poorer heat transfer from fins to air.

Bottom line is that those small fans are not going to make things significantly dirtier, IMO.  Not enough to be concerned about.  How much actual benefit the fans provide is another subject...I am sure they help in extreme situations like very hot weather in stop and go traffic.  By hot, I would define that as over 85 degrees F ambient.

[DDavidson]

Driving on a wet dirt/gravel road (Glacier Natl Park to be exact) packed my oil cooler with mud which then dried as I continued my trip. I saw the dried dirt and didn't realize the extent to which it was clogged until I was at the car wash. It probably took me about 10-15 minutes of spraying with the high pressure wand to unclog the openings. It clogged at least 30% to 50% of the openings. Dried like adobe brick, the water just bounced off.

Do they make mud flaps for the front fender? 

[spydglide]

Do they make mud flaps for the front fender? 

Sure........remember that most well-dressed Harleys had mud flaps on the front fender back in the days of mostly dirt roads ('30s & '40s).  spyder

[longlast]

 There you go, if you don't mind mud flaps they can look quite good. As it's been said stones and mud could  damage or clog up the cooler. So a mud flap could also be a consideration as to help protecting and keeping
it cleaner. I have no doubt that Fad68 fans will do the trick to cool things down to a degree to help in bad traffic
situations. I for one will be making the addition to my cooler as well. Great discussions all helpfull

[BigLew]

Last time I looked no one made a mud flap for the fender on the 09 SERG!

BigLew

[longlast]

Last time I looked no one made a mud flap for the fender on the 09 SERG!

BigLew

  I'm sure with a bit of creativity one could make their own with a pinch of customisation to top it of.
  Take a look through some of the old school bikes to get some help with any ideas

[timo482]

harley makes mud flaps

they are listed as rear mud flaps - but work front or back

the drag is you have to drill the fender, on the rear there is a way to bolt the mud flap to a bracket and bolt it to something else

but if you look at old photos they were often just drilled and bolted on.

when i had a HD oil cooler mounted down low - i had a mud flap on the front fender - ZERO crap in the cooler, now i have a side mounted cooler and its no issue at all, so no mud flap.

to

[Phantom309]

Nice job! ... I really like your install since it's hardly noticeable ... only giveaway are the tabs for the zip-ties which are barely visible. Now you should consider trading your air temp. gauge for an oil temp. just to see how much they really do help in traffic. How much were they and can you hear them over the motor and radio?

[Fed68]

Nice job! ... I really like your install since it's hardly noticeable ... only giveaway are the tabs for the zip-ties which are barely visible. Now you should consider trading your air temp. gauge for an oil temp. just to see how much they really do help in traffic. How much were they and can you hear them over the motor and radio?

The fans are from BigSky Fans.  Just search the vendor section and you'll find them.  They were $70.  They were suprisingly loud, but still can't hear them over the motor.

I'm struggling with finding an oil temp gauge.  I want the spun oil temp gauge to match the rest of my guages, but Harley decided in their wisdom to discontinue making them.  Had a dealer try to do a search of other dealers to find one sitting around but no luck.  There is a company that sells one that it is very similar (Rodger McEwin), but all the vendors that sells them are out and they say they do not know when they will get any in.