Adding an oil temp gauge isn't all that hard. Alternately, if you have a real oil pressure gauge you can tell when the oil temp has come up because the pressure drops at idle.

As for the factory oil warmer -- I've had two of the stupid teeny coolant lines fail on me, one of them dumping all my coolant out at Laguna a few years ago, costing me a track day and a head gasket. They're gone, and good riddance.

--Ian

 

I have had lots of cars over the years. I have never warmed them up; only made sure oil pressure was up to normal. After that, I flog them like I stole them.

In all this time, I have never worn out an engine before corrosion destroyed the rest of the vehicle. No sense in having a pristine 100k+ mileage motor in a rusted out hulk. Maybe if I lived somewhere that salt & snow wasn't a factor (or it was an expensive exotic) I might treat them better. But I've never had an internal engine failure due to wear, so I'll keep on beating on them.

 

But you live in Rochester, where they rust out cars in 3 years. Come down south were my 25 year old car doesn't even have a lick of rust.

I drive it gingerly until the water temp comes up and add a minute or two before I flog my street cars. Autocross cars I try and do the same, but it's not as easy to do. Full power or RPM while cold is a good way to screw up the pistons.

Happens all the time in the watercooled 2 stroke world. Cold engine, full throttle, piston warms up and expands, cylinder still cold, piston literally sticks in the bore. Complete lockup.

 

Deviate has a 4000rpm rev limiter set for something like 140° clt. I'm pretty good about short shifting the first few minutes on my own but every now and then it catches me. Even then, I won't use WOT or high revs until the tstat is fully open to guarantee I have some OT. Deviate has no gauges beyond OEM. The race cars all have OT gauges.

 

On a Mazdaspeed Miata the Check Engine Light will come on if you flog it before it gets up to operating temperature.

 

I believe the new Focus ST has a low temp indicator as well.

The vast majority of modern ECUs on boosted vehicles also pull timing or dump boost until some thermal setpoint, usually CLT (probably because CLT sensor is already in place.) Hell, the econobox Nissan rental car I had the last time I was in AZ pulled timing until the low temp light went off and it was a tiny NA engine.

Anyone know what this is?


Its a thermal vacuum switch. Its screwed into a water jacket on the intake manifold of my 390FE powered 1974 Ford F250. When the coolant is cold, its job is to block off the vacuum signal that goes to the vacuum advance diaphragm in the distributor thus prevent any timing advance beyond the static base timing. Once the coolant in the block reaches about 140° it opens up and allows the timing to advance based on manifold vacuum. (Yes, part of this is for emissions reasons but these devices date back much much further than emissions compliance.)

As you can see, this is absolutely nothing new. I'm happy to follow the trend.

 

Correcto-mundo. On dbw cars the throttle mapping acommodates temps, and you basically "can't" drive the car hard when its cold even if you tried.

 

If you don't heat the oil up and rev it, the bearings will not last long. It's not so much the boost than the RPM that matters. At the race track, you go out on a cold engine and rev it, you most likely are coming back on a tow truck. Drag strip is no different. Now for drag strip, some of those guys run on special lubes (no oil sometimes) so can't really follow that.

 

I have a 50C rule for a cold engine.
The oil has to get up to 50C (120F) before I rev or boost it.
Luckily, I have almost a whole mile of downhill narrow streets before I get to the main road. I just start and roll down the streets at idle, the engine warms up by the time I get to the first light.
Then I flog it.

 

Would you happen to know the CEL code that comes on?

 

I implemented a "trick" today. I set Decel Fuel Cut to start at 175 CLT temp. So, without a real gauge, or any lights, I can at least know when the CLT is at that temp by lifting the throttle. If the AFR goes full peg, indicating Fuel Cut, then I know the CLT is at that temp. More definitive than the OEM temp gauge.

 

#Threaddrift

Duuudee! Pics of your dentside. Nowww. I've got a 72 F100 with a 360FE.

 

What I did when I drove mine everyday, I just knew that say, it's 90*F outside when I crank for the day, it takes 5 min of my normal driving to get up to temp (coolant), if it's 30*F, make that 8 minutes. I would assume that with the factory oil wamer/cooler, oil temp probably lagged coolant by a little as the engine is warming up. I would generally give the car about 1-2 minutes of idling, then 2-3 minutes of normal driving before finding the rev limiter. Can't really say this "worked", I broke a few engines during this time, but I can say that all of them were bent rods, cracked piston, dead rings. None showed any meaningful bearing wear.

 

Under non-turbo-in-boost conditions most of the oil temp in a BP is from friction. I have both coolant and oil temp (measured at the filter, the hotter location) gauges in my car. During warmup, oil temp lags coolant temp by about 50F. When it's <40F ambient, oil might lag by 60F during warmup. But regardless of ambient temp, within 3 miles of freeway driving the oil is warmed up. At 3k rpm, it only takes about 90 seconds of running after the stock temp gauge reads normal for the oil to be fully warmed up.

 

Mobius,

Sounds like my 175* H2O is a good goal, then. Oil should be close or over 120* at that point. Thanks for the feedback.