What's a thermographer to do on the average Sunday afternoon? Bring that Harley out from winter storage and fire it up, that's what. Throw in a thermal imager, add a tire smoke-show or two and you have a great way liven up your Sunday afternoon. You may even learn something along the way.

First, We rolled it out of the garage. The Harley Davidson custom Fat Boy 1340 cc/ 80 cubic inches of V-twin rolling thunder.

It didn't take long for the battery power to go dead with our first attempts to start the engine. Trying to start that engine from a cold start proved to much for the onboard battery and we soon had to revert to a jump start from the old pick-up truck. As the engine was trying to start, the thermal inspection showed the electric starter warming up as it cranked the engine over ( yellow circle in each image below).

Thermal Image

Photo

The engine finally began to fire and with a few good turns of the throttle that famliar Harley-Davison thunder was in the air. The thermal images show the engine at various stages of heating after starting.

After 10 seconds

After 1 minute

After 2 minutes