Still pulling up a lot or erroneous abbreviations. Early development drug disorder? **** man, I'm usually good at these.

*edit* thank you. Jesus I'm slow.

 

 

Its on CL, I want it sold lol.

 

The selection and pricing of miatas in your area makes me a little weepy. It is very rare that a clean car pops up around here for less than 5k or so.

 

Link?

 

https://corvallis.craigslist.org/cto/4870758180.html

 

Not bad. I'd say good price for turbo and lowish miles. Hopefully it sells soon for you.

 

Before I get this done I figured I'd ask real quick. Do you foresee an issue with welding a 1/8NPT bung into the wall of the Mocal sandwich plate as an oil temp sensor source?

I hear the oil temp is slightly higher here rather than the pan, but considering the pan is on the engine, and in the car, it is rather hard to do it correctly(weld) rather than tapping & JB welding and hoping for no further issues down the road.

Seeing as the plate isn't installed yet, and the Setrab is f'n huge, a slightly higher oil temp reading doesn't warrant a danger flag to me.

 

It's an aluminum housing, I'd just tap it. Make sure you aren't obstructing anything else and run an NPT tap through it.

 

What about something like this? Ran across it the other day doing research.

 

The guy who welded the aluminum oil cooler brackets could probably do it in 5 minutes, but maybe I'm just going overkill with a welded bung rather than a tapped thread.

 

Oh come on Jeff, nothing you ever do is overkill.

 

I tend to do things at 10/10ths true, but some are justifiable and others I've had to stop myself before I create a monster of a situation(cutting my front core support for the airflows).

 

Another option to consider is depending on your oil temp gauge you can get a sensor that replaces the oil drain plug. Which would give you better temperature anyways.

 

Do not want. Blocks oil flow. There's a reason we're going for -10 hose.

Drill, tap, screw in with thread sealant and move on. There's a lot of meat on that sandwich adapter. If you do decide to weld it, make sure to remove the rubber O-ring and thermostat with wax element. Otherwise they could get damaged.

Sensing your temperature at the sandwich plate tells you the temperature of the oil being actively sucked-up and used by the engine. Sensing at the oil pan/oil drain plug is a convenient, "good-enough" substitute but will read cold. The "better" reading is at the sandwich plate, but either will do.

 

Hmmm, opposite from what I have read in the past. I thought that the sandwich adapter read hot because it was pressurized oil, while the reading in the pan was the real temp of the oil.

 

Props. Good info, thank you Mr. Encyclopedia of all things Miata.

 

Uhhhh . . . .

Think about it. I know you'll come to the correct conclusion.

Hint #1 . . . our oil pans have fins for a reason.
Hint #2 . . . liquids like oil and water don't follow the ideal gas law -- they're considered "incompressible."
Hint #3 . . . even if the oil pump raised the temperature 1000F, that's still the temp going into your cooler/engine -- so wouldn't you like to know what it is?

That said, generally the difference will be on the order of 15F under light running and 30F under track conditions, so the oil pan is "good enough." Beyond absolute numbers, the main thing you want to catch on track is a bad trend (i.e., oil suddenly getting hotter for no apparent reason -- time to slow down and investigate).

 

Makes sense to me, just had read before that the pan was the place to put it. Mine is going on a sandwich plate just for ease.

 

Where I got my incorrect oil-compression info, and also where it was correctly fixed.

https://www.miataturbo.net/engine-pe...acement-66980/