[s-cars] Oil Temperature Question-How Hot is too hot

[Theodore Chen]

5. Taka, Don't have an undertray anymore, so I can't try to refit. I  
read some Corvette forum posts and some guys who track their cars  
have seen similar temps during a roughly 30 min track session  
(285-300F or 140-150C). There was some chatter that an external  
aftermarket cooler would lower temps by 20 (I presume F instead of C,  
20F is about 7C). Some posts mentioned that the combo radiator/cooler  
option you mentioned was a good compromise if you drove the car on  
the street (of course there were a few posts that said the combo unit  
didn't work well for them), but that they would only use a separate  
larger unit if it was a track only car. Would you know why that might  
be?


oil takes a long time to get up to operating temperature, and if you use an external oil cooler, it will slow down the warmup time for the oil.  the integrated oil cooler doesn't have that problem, and in fact, the oil gets up to operating temperature faster because the coolant warms it.

you can mitigate this with a thermostat for the oil, but that's one more component to plumb in.

my mustang has a 3" thick griffin radiator with an integral oil cooler that has 12AN ports.  the coolant and oil temperatures stay rock steady at the track, which wasn't the case with the stock radiator and no oil cooler.

the integrated oil cooler means you're dumping the heat into the radiator, but if you have a big radiator, that can work well and greatly simplifies setup.  that's also a little less hardware hanging way out at the front of the car.  an external oil cooler is still better, but you have to find a place to put it and run all the plumbing.

-teddy