This might end up being a stupid topic but I was just curious --Starting with a cold engine, on an avg temp day, approx how many minutes before your cylinder and pipe are too hot to touch? I've read enough about how hot the Savage runs I was just wondering if mine runs warmer than most.

I know I suffer more the first few minutes Im awake..My oil is thick & the pressure has dropped off dramatically in the last few years. I can hear stuff grinding..

i once read when i owned my65 bug, you should let it warm up the time it takes you to smoke a cigeratte.  since i don't smoke tobbaco any longer i just pretend i'm smoken' one. works for me.

Just so happens that I recently bought one of those LED readout thermometers that reads temp of objects without actually touching it.

I had a lot of fun starting all three Savages up in the garage with the door open and a big shop fan blowing a good breeze at them from the front. Not the same as running them down the road under load of anything; but I was still able to make some interesting observations:

With the whole group of them sitting and idling, and an occasional blip of the throttle on each just to keep the spark plugs from loading up; I let them all set there and get up to a normal operating temperature.

Of course the area to heat up quickest is the area right around the cylinder exhaust port, and it reaches a couple of hundred degrees within just a half minute or so. Other areas of the engine warm up at various speeds, and some of them are surprisingly slow at gaining any heat at all.

Just several observations: The front and back of the cylinder heat up much quicker than the sides of the cylinder. The whole head doesn't heat up as quick as you might think it would. Takes it a couple of minutes to get up to 180º-200ºF + all over. The top of the crankcase starts to get mildly warm- 130-150º within a couple of minutes but the lower side cases and bottom of the engine were still reading under 100º after 8-10 minutes of sitting there running. I suspect that the transmission will stay pretty cool for a long time if you don't go ahead and start riding the bike.

My little temp "probe" has limits of like -27ºF and +450ºF which is sufficient to let you know if the engine is getting hot enough to break down most oils... I never found any area on the engine that got over 350º except right up real close to the exhaust port on the head... and curiously enough, at the choke point on the exhaust pipe where the muffler connects to the header. For some reason that choke point in the exhaust pipe seems to run at a temp similar to the temp at the the exhaust port on any given bike. And here's one very interesting fact that I discovered: The two bikes with H-D mufflers on them had considerably hotter temps at both the head port and the choke point where the the muffler connects. The bike with the Supertrapp was running nearly 100º cooler at these points.

Now I'm not suggesting that the Supertrapp alone is making that area of the engine run a lot cooler all by itself. There may be other carb tuning issues to consider. But I'm pretty darn sure that at least one of My Dyna-Sporty muffler bikes is running well rich since it puffs black carbon smoke regularly. IOW, I don't think it runs hot from being tunned lean. But SOMETHING is going on with the Supertrapp to cause the exhaust port area on the bike to be considerably cooler; and I have to think that has to be a good thing.