Talk:Harley-Davidson Evolution engine

Reception

About the Evolution being a betrayal - is it as simple as the engine was easy to maintain, and therefore served the less mechanically-inclined? I thought some of the issue was also that it lost its maintainability. I'm thinking along the lines of the one-piece crank here. We don't seem to have any sources on this...maybe we should make a new section (suggest title "Reception") and cover the POVs on the controversy? – usigned edit by 152.121.16.7

This sounds like a great idea. The article is sourceless as of my writing, so any sources would be an improvement. It makes sense that improvements to make it more maintainable for novices may have also made the engine more expert-hostile than the Shovelhead. Culturally, however, there is definitely an element of the Evolution being "ruined cause it is too popular". –BozoTheScary 21:33, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

Presumed ills of water-cooled engines.

I removed, from the article's third paragraph, the following statement: "In water-cooled vehicles the oil and water will often mix and contribute to lubrication failure and engine destruction."

It is true that water-cooled engines (I presume the writer intended "engines" rather than "vehicles.") occasionally suffer from mixture of oil and water mixture--usually due to the failure of a gasket or seal, less commonly due to cylinder block or head failure. However the statement that I removed is simply not supported by any facts of which I'm aware.

For more than a few years, there has been on our planet a quite sizable number of vehicles with water-cooled engines. I think it safe to say that the proportion of water-cooled engines versus air-and-oil-cooled engines used in car and motorcycle applications has generally been on the rise for several decades. Despite the large and increasing prevalence of water-cooled engines in vehicles, oil and water mixture is uncommon even in vehicles that are not closely maintained.

I've searched for but am unable to find a citation detailing the absolute or relative numbers of oil and water mixture problems in water-cooled vehicle engines. I spent the better part of twenty years working in the commercial auto parts business (roughly 1978 to 1987) and many more years working on motor vehicle engines of various sorts, so am relying on my own familiarity with the subject and on the large and increasing adoption of water-cooling technology for vehicle engines around the world. Tmelinaraab (talk) 22:26, 26 January 2012 (UTC)