Oil cooler

[flynrider]

Thinking back about the early days of Japanese bikes, over heating wasn't really a problem until they started making bikes over 1000 cc's. I believe that is when we started getting water cooled motorcycles. I remember the first bike that really gave me problems with over heating, that was my XS1100 Yamaha. It was air cooled and did not have a oil cooler. So I would assume the oil cooler is a necessity on the CB1100 for reliability. Nothing worse than having your bike shut off in traffic from over heating. It happened to me quite a few times on that XS1100. I think it would be a big mistake removing the oil cooler on the CB1100.

I had a '79 XS1100 right before buying my CB. That is the bike that really sold me on a big bore four. My XS had come indirectly to me from the original owner (long story) and he fitted the bike with an oil cooler. It wasn't until months after owning the XS that I realized it wasn't stock. I had been under the impression that the bike had come from the factory that way. Turns out, it was a genuine Yamaha add-on. Seems those big XS's had some over heating problems.

That was a fairly common mod for liter sized air cooled bikes (particularly out here in the desert). It's pretty typical to see aftermarket coolers on the old Suzuki GS and Kaw KZ liter bikes as well. I remember when the '83 CB1100F came stock with an oil cooler, people were talking about how they'd finally got it right