I really want to add a cooler to my car but I'm just not sure where I would mount it, my radiator/IC setup is boxed in and the space between my fans and engine is pretty tight too. Bah!

 

If someone has pics of this I'd love to see them

 

I'll have pics later this afternoon of the mocal plate.

 

Bitchin, thanks Curly.

I drilled a hole in my oil pan and welded in an 1/8" NPT bung, but it turns out I went full retard and its behind the motor mount.

 

Dont feel too bad. when I did mine I melted the 1/8"npt bung into an oval the first time and had to grind it off. And I put it on the drivers side in the sump for the sole reason that hustler said to put it there. After I put the engine back in I realized there was no ******* reason it shouldnt have gone on the passenger's side.

 

Oh it gets worse... the oil drain on the other side is almost directly inline with the hard lines that come out of the steering rack.

For those following along at home, this location:


When I go full retard, I go all the ******* way.

 

It's almost like we were surrounded by Miatas and just decided to not look at them and weld things wherever we felt looked good at the time. >.<

 

The Mocal plate:





Let me know if you want to see any other angles.

 

Doesn't this setup limit your ability to diagnose a faulty thermostat? If it doesn't sense actual temp until the thermostat opens then what happens when the thermostat fails to open and your actual oil temp is 280 but your gauge only reads 100?

 

When I put the temp sender in Theseus' oil pan, I was careful to locate it so that it wouldn't foul the motor mount. I then put the engine in the car and realized that it comes this close to hitting the subframe instead

 

That's the worst part. We had prety much no excuse, I don't think we were even drinking at the time.

It'll just force me to depower the rack. I'll bring over my spare and you can show me how to take it apart and get at the pinion.

My god, he is human! This actually makes me feel far better about the whole thing.

 

Perrrrfect. Thanks again! Props.

Along the same lines what freedomgli was just asking about, that looks the the only space avalible for the sensor is after the thermostat. I believe Andrew had said there was "some" leakage around teh thermostat when closed, but is there "enough" leakage that the sensor can give an accurate reading for say, warmup?

 

Moral of the story: When drilling into the oil pan for bung placement, mark the desired locations of said bungs before you take the motor out?

This is why I'm at MT.net, I'm here to take notes of other people failures, and try to avoid the headaches.

Thanks for bringing up your failures!

 

If you look carefully at the design of these thermostatic sandwich plates, you'll notice that the only thing the thermostat does is open a bypass passage when cold. It doesn't close off the openings going to the cooler at all. The bypass passage itself isn't all that big, certainly not nearly as big as a -10 opening. So, the bypass passage reduces flow to the oil cooler but never positively seals it off. So . . . there is plenty of oil flow there to give an accurate reading regardless of thermostat position.

BTW, what drives oil temps is RPM. It seems much more driven by high RPM operation (even at partial throttle settings) than by throttle position/load. I noticed this when I was doing some VE tuning and trying to hit high RPM/low MAP regions. Oil temp still soared in that condition.

 

Was it for a turbo oil return or to put a temperature sensor ?
How temperature will differ from let say the oil drain location using VDO unit ?(323-055: Temperature Sender: 300F/150C - M14x1.5 - Screw - Single , by VDO - eGauges.com)

I mean it will see oil going through the pick up tube so maybe a little cooler but is the other way better ?!?

 

The above image was my oil return for the turbo. I mean it'll work, but I need to use it with a depowered rack. I posted pics of the temp bung location somewhere as well, but I'll stop crapping up Andrews awesome thread with my failures.

 

Speaking of the VDO drain plug sender, what are people's current thoughts on this? I read a very old thread on miata.net where one guy said it was very slow to respond. Too much latency. He ditched it for a different sender attached to a sandwich plate for better response. Still the case? Or are people happy with the VDO drain plug sender?

 

That's fine when you are light load like cruising the freeway. Up the load and oil temps will increase to the 220-240° range where you want them. The tstat is there to make sure it doesn't drop below 180°. That said if you have a really well ducted 20 row cooler cruising the highway on a 50° day, it may not reach 180° oil temps ever. In such rare combinations, it's a good idea to block off part of the cooler during winter months for light load usage. Few will ever have the problem of overcooling though.

Edit: Just realized it's alreday a 3 page thread and this was already answered. doh

That's Crusher, not the OGK. Anyhow, as Andrew alluded to, that motor and everything about it was anomalous, especially it's cooling systems. Unless you like building $10,000 145whp enduro engines, you're not likely to need nor want to duplicate anything on that puppy. O/C in front is preferred.

 

I was having packaging worries about my cooler and put this together over the winter. It is a Setrab with some home brewed braided lines and a glowshift sandwich plate with no thermostat. I would not do this with a street car but mine is only run on the track so here were some of my reasons for the path I chose:

1. My heat exchangers are very heavily boxed and ducted so routing oil lines in front of the stack was problematic.
2. I wanted a sandwich plate with two bungs for sensors - one for temperature (pre-cooler) and one for an oh **** idiot light to compliment the NA6 pressure gauge. The NA6 sender is too thick for a traditional T.
3. Lacking a thermostat in the sandwich plate, I figured warmer air from the radiator would help warm the oil more quickly to a reasonable temperature.





The lines were the perfect length before my crossflow rotted out and I went with the fleabay cheapie that is much thicker. I didn't have time to make new lines and it is hard to cut 1/2" off the braided stuff to slightly shorten the length so I'll need to order a few more feet and start over. Some guys just stick a big RX7 cooler up under the bumper support with no airflow and let it act like a big heat sink so an oil cooler behind the radiator with some airflow had to be at least as good.

I ran one track day (50* ambient) with this configuration but the cooler line just looped and saw the oil temps hit 250*. I was on the track Thursday in Portland in ~90* ambient with ~280whp and turning consistent 1:27s on clean laps. The oil temperature never got above 210* while the water temps were solid at 205*. 90* is about as hot as we ever run in the PNW so I'm perfectly happy with these results. I've been on the track on much cooler days in this configuration and gotten similar temperatures so the cooler in this location is shedding a bunch of heat even taking in the hot air off the radiator.

 

This was my exact idea of how i wanted to setup my cooler. I may make a block off plate with a cutout in it and then mount the cooler on block off. So more air can make it through the oil cooler. I can afford a little less cooling through the radiator with my current setup im sub 180 degrees at cruise