Oil Cooler Needed on L28et?

[nuclear_z]

Howdy fellows!

 

I have an oil filter relocation block (just moves the filter to an upside down position beside the block) and it runs two lines out to my oil cooler in front of the rad. support panel.

 

Question:

 

1. Did L28et engines come out originally with an oil cooler?

2. If not, will removing the cooler for the winter months be a problem in your opinion? My oil pressure never drops from the right hand side of the gauge, indicating to me that it doesnt warm up enough do to the cooler. Sound right?

 

Can i have some educated thoughts please?

[DevilZ]

Howdy fellows!

 

I have an oil filter relocation block (just moves the filter to an upside down position beside the block) and it runs two lines out to my oil cooler in front of the rad. support panel.

 

Question:

 

1. Did L28et engines come out originally with an oil cooler?

2. If not, will removing the cooler for the winter months be a problem in your opinion? My oil pressure never drops from the right hand side of the gauge, indicating to me that it doesnt warm up enough do to the cooler. Sound right?

 

Can i have some educated thoughts please?

 

 

I've spoken to some race teams and they advised me not to run an oil cooler. They said that on most of there race cars they remove them and the only things they really have running oil coolers are there NASCARS. They explained to me there reasoning is that if the cars radiator is efficient enough then its not needed. This is because the block and oil are suppose to transfer there heat to the coolant, which obvoiusly gets cooled through the radiator. They told me they see more problems caused by people running oil coolers and they remove most of them from the vehicles they have racing. Though opposite to what I was told by them I have noticed a lot of new production cars (even fords/holdens) come with oil coolers for just straight out road cars

If you were just planning not to run it in winter but in summer, then just cover it instead of removing it.

 

 

[Aaron Neubauer]

I'll have a crack at an answer.

 

Petroleum (hydrocarbon) based oils are continuously breaking down right from point of production (synthetic additives slow this process) from my understanding, heat is just a catalyst.  What you have proposed DevilZ can work for race cars which spend 99% of their running life in motion and have a continuous flow of air over a radiator (and the whole engine bay!).  These race cars may use a specific blend of oil suited to its duties.

 

For street cars which are subject to heat soak (stop and start traffic) and hot points within the oil's circulation (ie, turbo) it never hurts to have supplementary cooling.  Both our drift cars run oil coolers for this reason (cyclic heating and cooling during runs).  These systems are all centered around longevity and reliability.

 

Point 2.  Oil pressure never drops off?  With a turbo motor, oil will always heat up quicker than NA as the oil is absorbing heat energy from the turbo due to the exhaust gases.  It could be possible that there is something wrong with the sender or the gauge or even a blockage within the oil's circulation path.  Another thing to look at is the grade of oil you are using (I hope its fully synthetic being a turbo  ) as it might be far to thick even when warm.  I used to run 10W-40 in my old VL Calais Turbo, which might have been a little thin considering you could hear the hydraulic lifter runout frequently in summer lol!

 

I plan to put an oil cooler and remote oil filter (to aid in oil changes  ) on my stroker L30.....if I ever get around to it......

[Zedman240®]

Would it be wise to install an oil temp gauge to see what actual temps the oil gets to? I've read that the oil and water temps should be about the same. If it doesn't get hot, you probably won't need one.

 

DevilZ, I think the oil coolers you might be seeing are the trans oil coolers for the auto's. If you tow a lot with an auto it must be fitted to prevent killing the transmission.

[(Locky)]

if you do get one, get oe with an inbuilt thermostat (like greddy) or ad one inline

 

this will solve the problem of winter/ getting the oil up to temp

 

 

no way id run a street car with a oilcooler without a thermostat

[Scando]

I run one on my L28ET but the car is only used for circuit racing.  It made a big difference to both my engine temp and oil pressure in the longer races.  As Neuby said, because the oil flows through your turbo it gets a lot hotter than on an n/a car.  But for road use you should never get it hot enough to need an oil cooler.  Like others have said, an oil thermostat might be the way to go.  Then you've got the best of both worlds.  I wouldn't be concerned about the oil pressure not dropping off unless it's unusually high in the first place.  Mine doesn't drop off either when driving the car 'normally'.

 

As for oil, I run a 25-60w Valvoline oil.  At the last meeting I used a 25-60w Fuchs oil because a rep gave it to us to try and it was useless.  Everything got hotter than normal and the car developed oil leaks it's never had before which suggests it breaks down badly when hot.  When we've pulled previous engines down after using the valvoine there have been no signs of wear and the oil leaves a nice film over all the parts.

[nuclear_z]

Funnily enough after writing this up I had a major issue raise its ugly head on my at 9:30 at night... Driving home, notice oil pressure getting really low > pull into a servo and check the oil level and its really low... Notice a line of drips coming out the back and i'd been losing oil for about 5km....

 

Go into the servo, buy 5L of 10-40w oil, put it in and turn car on - oil pressure goes up then plumets! The oil feed to the turbo blew off and spewed about 4 litres of oil everywhere before the guage registered the loss and went down...

 

Luckily nothing was damaged and i put the hose back on, filled her up AGAIN and came home! I am going to buy a host of guages as the factory ones are not responsive enough/accurate.

[.]

I ran my 280zx at Morgan park a few years back. I pushed kinda hard for a few laps. Coolant temp was fine and as I was driving the oil pressure was ok. But as I finished and allowed my revs to drop so did the oil pressure. To the point where it wasn't even registering on the gauge. So I decided when I was planning my 240z build I would take extra precautions. Including an oil cooler and larger sump. Seems to do the trick for me.