rrroadster

Yeah, I checked it with a hotplate & pot of water. I used my Craftsman voltmeter thermocouple to compare it against.

It seems where there is room for a larger oil cooler, there isn't enough flow. Where I can get flow, I don't have room for a large enough oil cooler.

I have a couple of sticks of 3/4" aluminum conduit. I wonder how mounting a "trombone" tube to the Power Plant Frame for cooling after the front cooler would work.

One requirement I have for mods to the car is that they must withstand a reasonable off track excursion or impact with a tire wall.

m2cupcar

iTrader: (5)

You should be able to run a wide and short oil cooler under your rad in the front. Then just modify the mouth shrouding to drop down and feed some air to it. It doesn't it need to be too big since it'll get direct exposure- but you can use the mods to the mouth shroud to control just how much air gets to it. That way you'll lose less air to the other exchangers. There's a lot of vertical space under the rad base.

JKav

iTrader: (1)

Another way to force more air through the "mouth" is to add a splitter. A real splitter; not one like the front lip on the R-pkg as it's not nearly pronounced enough. The extra lift reduction you get at the front with a real splitter is nice too.

Savington

iTrader: (31)

Well ****. I got to really pound on my car (tons of hard 5th and 6th gear time) this weekend at Willow Springs and my oil temps are as high as ever, 270-280 degrees. I thought it might be the sensor heatsoaking (I measure in the oil feed line to the turbo, right next to the DP) but I wonder if my sensor is just bullshit. My cooler is sort of behind the bumper beam, and it's also a cheap cooler. Still some stuff to try.

m2cupcar

iTrader: (5)

Sav those temps don't seem too outrageous- actually expected for the cooler location on a car that wasn't turbo'd OE. Those temps are what a lot of OE turbo'd cars see with the stock oiling configurations. I did a bunch of searching and high 200s was typical for a 20-30 minute track session in high ambient. As Jkav mentioned, capacity is another means for increasing cooler- but that doesn't have to be via the sump. Large oil coolers increase capacity AND cooling - which is why I plan on using that big mercedes diesel unit... one day.

rrroadster

Savington, I feel your pain. I've avoided summer events because of oil temps.

I take my oil temps at the exit from the oil filter adapter where it typically reads ~20*F higher than the crank case. I don't think I've ever gone over 285*F indicated but after finding my temp sender reads 15*F low I really got puckered.

I contacted Amsoil and talked to their technical support. They say their 0W-30 I run experiences shear at 304*F. I told him I change the oil and filter every 3-6 hours. He said not to worry too much about the shear temp with the maintenance frequency I practice. He said the thing I really need to watch is the flash point at 420*F. Makes me wonder if I had the most astute tech guy on the line. He strongly suggested I send an oil sample in for analysis to see what was really going on inside the engine. He indicated I should be real interested in oxidation of the oil.

My intercooler is pretty big and blocks the majority of the rad in the lower bumper cover opening so it's not too feasible to install something lower in the front without significant rework.

I'm going to put a 24 row back in horizontally between the steering rack and radiator. It will be in series with the one in the nose and recieve oil flow first. If nothing else it will dump heat radiantly and be most effective getting max temps first, then on to the air cooled unit. It sits right on top of the under tray. I have the under tray swiss cheesed there but never felt I got flow through the unit. I think I'm going to add a louvered panel to the bottom of the undertray to help encourage flow out under the car.

I'll be running VIR South Course in 3 weeks. It's pretty brutal with a lot of high rpms and frequent shifting. If it works well there, maybe I'm on to something.