I'm sure I could do that, I still street drive this car occasionally and I drive it to the track. The cooler actually is positioned nicely for heat extraction since I have a hood vent there as well.

I think he's saying the majority of applications are not running a TSE Radiator :brain: Of course, pumping heat into the cooling system via the coolant return to the engine is going to decrease the efficiency if any setup, regardless of radiator.

Many race cars are plumbed poorly, from what I've seen.

An oil cooler mounted so that its ports are on the bottom will trap air inside it. The issue here is that the cooler is not being fully utilized, since there's a big ol' air spring inside it preventing the top-most rows from being filled with oil.

Orienting the cooler so that the ports are at the top (or on the side, with the bottom port as the entrance and the top one as the exit) will purge the air from the cooler.

Hood risers bad. High pressure zone at base of windshield means you will actually decrease the pressure differential across the heat exchangers. Bad.

Hood vents/louvers, OTOH, will help. See aerodynamics threads here on mt.net and the singular motorsports hood louvers thread for more data.

118 is hot. If the car is street driven and has AC you may require dual fans to handle slow/stopped conditions. Tough to also have viable on track cooling while also supporting that requirement.

From a reputable source (see http://www.thinkauto.com/plist010106gweb.pdf page 8):

"Oil coolers may be mounted anyway up and are self bleeding, the resistance to oil flow through the matrix means that tanks will fill up evenly pushing out the air before the oil flows through."

Confirmed by numerous OEMs, racers and personal experience. Let us know when you have any direct, verifiable experience with engine oil coolers to the contrary.

I don't necessarily need for you to believe it for my life to be fulfilled :) , but I have personally witnessed this phenomenon. The top of the automatic transmission cooler, full of air, was drastically cooler than the bottom of the cooler where the oil was actually flowing across from inlet to outlet. This could be replicated by others that wish to test it themselves using a Harbor Freight infrared thermometer or simply their bare hands as I did.

I imagine a scenario where the thick oil could flow with enough volume to force the column of air downward through the outlet and this could certainly be the case with some of the systems out there. But even with the volume of coolant that our water pumps move there is a reason coolant radiators all have vents and purge openings at their top.

If given the opportunity to design an optimum oil cooler placement I would also have the inlet and outlet at the top to discourage drainback and the possibility of an extended dry start before the cooler is filled and the oil finally gets to the rotating and sliding engine components.

lol @ arguing with JKav

I agree with this, of all the people on this forum JKav is one of the very few that I will trust above all others.

There is, however, a slight viscosity difference between motor oil vs. ATF/Water at startup. That's key.

On my install the temp at top and bottom of the cooler is the same, verified with an IR thermometer (since I'll admit I was initially worried about it). The routing/short hose length advantages are compelling -- at least to me.

Can some comment on the differences between the Trackspeed, Flyin Miata, Moss Miata, and other available kits?

My car is a 1.6 and the available spacer for Plug and play install is appealing. Is their mounting location adequate? It's hard to tell from their pics how much airflow that area gets and if it may need any ducting.

I have a friend that bought and installed the FM kit for track use. He saw about a 10psi loss in oil pressure on track. He wasn't running an oil temperature gauge though, so don't know if that was related to not cooling well or -8 hoses. He did try to get additional air to the cooler. He wasn't very happy with it.

No direct experience with the others. The TSE kit sure looks like it has better parts than the others though.

I upgraded from the FM kit to TSE 25-row kit. Based on my experience with it (mostly track car, little street driving), YMMV...

FM Pros:
Super easy install
With ducting it does help quite a bit
Cheaper

FM Cons:
-8an lines
3-5psi drop at idle compared to TSE
Difficult to duct without exposing it to rocks and other debris
Did not keep oil temps under control under any track conditions
Cooler is mounted as one of the lowest points on the car

TSE Pros:
-10an lines
Installs wherever you want
Gobs and gobs of cooling
Seriously, it works very, very well
Your choice of cooler size based on needs

TSE Cons:
Requires minimal fab work for cooler mounting and line construction
Over-cooling with street driving unless the cooler is blocked off
More expensive


The TSE kit is 100% off-the-shelf parts neatly packed in a box, seriously TSE does some of the best packaging jobs I've ever seen. Nothing is custom to the Miata.
FM kit includes pre-assembled lines and model-specific mounting brackets with an off-the-shelf cooler and adapter. Both kits use the same Mocal thermostat adapter plate and both use (different sized) high quality Setrab coolers.

Just going off of what I have read, TSE and FM both use Setrab oil coolers, which already puts them ahead of others. TSE uses -10AN, while FM uses -08AN. This means the TSE kit will have less oil pressure loss. TSE's kit is a DIY install. FM's kit has brackets and pre-cut lines with fittings already attached, ready to rock, and also ready to be damaged due to its mounting location.

I cannot comment on the Moss kit, but I promise the heat exchanger they use is sub-par compared to the Setrab units, and the lines aren't the abrasion resistant braided stainless used in the FM and TSE kit. Also, I don't think their sandwich plate has a thermostat. For the moss kit: Don't even bother. Nothing in this kit is of the same quality as the TSE and FM parts.

I don't know of any other kits, but I would think the TSE and FM will trump them in both function and quality if it is in the same price range. I would go with the TSE kit if I needed a cooler at this time. Plus, you can readily choose the size oil cooler you require.

Seems like a no brainer here.

Can you elaborate on this? Were you seeing temperatures lower than the thermostat temperature? I haven't driven my install in cooler weather yet and am a bit worried about this.

Has anyone used a Setrab oil sandwich plate?

I am trying to find a comparison to the Mocal unit, but I can't find anything. I guess they are both awesome and reliable, but I'm just curious because everything in the TSE kit is Setrab, except for the Mocal oil sandwich plate, and I figured there must be a good reason for this.

Andrew, any particular reason for this?

Thanks for the input to those who commented. Maybe the simpler solution would be a 1.8 engine swap rather than figuring out the spacer :party:

+1. I was under the impression this is why we use the Mocal thermo plate.

I believe this type of thermostat never fully blocks off flow, there will always be flow through the oil cooler as long as there is oil pressure.

Considering this, with an effective oil cooler and very low flow volumes, the oil coming out of the cooler is going to be very close to ambient air temps, and even if the volume is very low, this will decrease oil temps, even when the thermostat is closed.

Someone correct me if I am wrong.

You're correct. The passages to the oil cooler are never blocked with a sandwich plate. The thermostatic element only opens a bypass. This is failsafe but might overcool, so I'd really like to hear MidPack's experience.

I've always had good luck with Mocal, so that's what I used for the kits. Which Setrab adapter are you specifically referring to? Got a link?