I've installed the FM oil cooler kit, and want to stop the water flowing through the stock oil cooler, but it's a pain in the *** to get to the water line at the back of the head. Would it be ok to cap the outlet coming off the water neck, and plug the line between the oil cooler and throttle body? The only issue I can think of is there will be stagnant water in the stock cooler, not sure if that'll be a problem.



C

 

Why bother? During warmup the stock oil cooler helps the oil get to temp quicker.

 

Agreed. The stock heat exchanger is valuable even if you have an external cooler.

 

FM kit has a 190* tstat that keep oil from flowing to the air to oil cooler when it's no up to temp so **** the stock cooler

yes, if you like making you coolest hotter for no reason

ignore them and cap the water line that goes from the back of the block and cap on the front neck where you planned to. remove the water lines to the throttle body unless you have a problem with icing the tb in the winter

 

if you really want to remove it, just blow through the lines once it's unplumbed. whatever you cant evacuate will eventually evaporate.

 

You know why they call it "coolant"? It's because it's the fluid used to transfer heat to the air. Making your coolant hotter makes your oil cooler. And then your coolant gets cooler when it goes through the radiator.

 

I’ve actually considered running a oil cooler sandwich from a 323. On that car the heater core line flows through it and it get more coolant flow.

But then I think one of these would be easier to install right in line with a coolant reroute it’s got all the right fittings and would fit nicely in the rad hose coming from the back of the head.

http://www.racerpartswholesale.com/p...eat_Exchangers

I think keeping the oil and water at similar temperature is a good thing and it will help pull more heat from the engine via the oil and feed it to the radiator as well.

Bob

 

I have one of these plumbed into the reroute on my car. No data about it's effectiveness though.

One of these days I'll get the car back on the road.

 

If you're referring to this one (made by mocal) it's utterly worthless on the street. All thermostats of that design are set up to bypass a certain amount of oil through the cooler even when the oil is ice cold.

I had one on my '92 for a while, and even with the smallest cooler Earl's makes, it took half of eternity for my oil temps to get up to normal in the morning. Seriously- by the end of my 15 minute commute, my oil temp would be maybe 160°F. I removed it and installed an OEM exchanger from a 1.8, and not only did my oil temps come up to normal much faster than they did with no cooler at all, but it keeps the oil at a nice temperature even in the harshest summer canyon runs and at AutoX, where you spend a lot of time sitting at idle just after running full throttle for two minutes solid.

For sustained track use, an air-oil exchanger might make sense. For anything less, the drawbacks far outweigh the advantages.

 

Even with the FM oil cooler, I'm still seeing highway oil temps of 230* @ 75mph on these brutal low 90* days in the Northeast. Mounted to the steering rack, it gets no airflow, so that's something I definitely need to work on.

The good news is I've got my highway water temps under control, to the tune of 201-204 at most. One of the most dramatic changes was using aluminum duct tape to seal the intercooler, AC condenser, and radiator together, and then the undertray to the radiator.

I appreciate all the input here, it's definitely food for thought. At this point, since my water temps are so much lower than the oil temp, I'll leave the stock cooler alone.

I don't have any track time planned this summer, so for now I'm ok. I'm going up to Watkins Glen in the beginning of October, and hope to run the car on the track. By then it'll be cooler.

C

 

i was told it works just right, well **** on me