It gets cold in DC and I like to drive my car during the winter when it's dry. Too hard to park it for 4-5 months. I'd rather wear the right clothes and drive it.
Last winter I tried blocking off the
oil cooler with plexiglass and while it looks nice, it's not enough.
Oil temp would hardly come off the peg at 60c.
So I am now thinking of
oil cooler thermostats. Here are my objectives (not necessarily in order):
1) I want to keep the oil cooler connected. Disconnecting it, bypassing it and having a "dummy" oil cooler is not something I am interested in.
2) I want something that is as innocuous as possible. I have a pretty period correct engine (427 SO) and I want to stay as close to that as possible. So Canton's thermostat, as pretty as it is, doesn't work for me. Way too much bling and annodized parts. The less you see it, the better in my opinion.
3) I obviously want something that works well, doesn't leak, opens reliably (it gets hot here in the summer, especially in traffic and I don't want to wrry about whether my oil thermostat is going to open...) etc.
4) I don't want to spend money foolishly, but I also will pay more for the right part for my application.
Here are my current candidates:
1) Earls:
http://www.summitracing.com/parts/EAR-502ERL/ (looks nice, good price, but seemed to have mixed reviews on other threads)
2) Mocal:
http://www.batinc.net/thermos.htm (looks OK and I guess I could mount it out of the way somewhere, seemed to have mixed reviews on other threads)
3)
http://www.beaumontmetalworks.com/oi...lve-final.html (pretty expensive, but looks nice and I like that I can manually adjust the flow - this would seem to be the choice if the cost was a bit more reasonable)
Thoughts? Advice?