Rain Riding

[JMod45]

I've been at work this week, watching the rain clouds, and thinking about the bike sitting at home.

The H2SX has a ram air intake on the very front, then a downward slope into the airbox, and an impeller pulling air into the engine.
Wouldn't this mean if you get caught in a decent rain, you're going to have a wet air filter pretty quick, and possibly some water coming into the engine / supercharger?

The air intake on my Ninja 1000 was under the tank, and air had to go up through the filter, then down into the engine, so it wasn't really a concern, as water would have to fight gravity.

My dad's Harley came with an air filter cover that you put on in the rain which would prevent water from going through the filter.

The bike is made and marketed as a touring bike, so you would certainly hope this was thought about, but you never know.

Any other thoughts on the subject?

[cOoTeR]

Vehicles have been running ram air systems for years without issues. You would need enough liquid to fill the cylinder at top dead center to enter into a cylinder all at once during a single stroke to "hydrolock" the engine. If you have an air filter in place it's highly unlikely that that much liquid could get into the air chamber all at once let alone into a single cylinder. You'd have to pour a decent amount into the intake or submerge the intake to damage the engine.

The design has been run on the H2/H2R for awhile now with no issues. Very little water if any will pass through your filter at a time. I think that you'd have to be riding in a pretty heavy rain to even effect the way the bike runs. I'm talking a rain so heavy you wouldn't be able to see your handle bars.

Some people are running water injection systems on their engines to cool down intake temps. It's popular with turbo and supercharged engines since they generate a lot of heat. Basically they are purposely injecting water or other liquid right into the engine after the airfilter. You have nothing to worry about.

[stk0308]

I rode in about 3.5 hours of rain a week ago, to get somewhere. The last half hour was an absolute downpour thunderstorm. The SX didn't miss a beat.

[nightWatcher]

Just finished a 1 week long tour, about 10 hours per day riding, much of it in rainy weather. Some massive downpours and the bike didn't have any problems. That being said, there's still the unknown issue of the big steam cloud that came out of the bike on the night I picked it up from the dealer and riding through torrential rain on the way home (which I posted about).