Oil Cooler or not

[priobe]

I have a Mocal Oil cooler and thinking of hooking it up. I live in Miami where it pretty much gets hot all the time. My oil temp never gets past 220.

The car is mostly street driven, so should I just leave it for show or put it to use.

[garry viohl]

Run snythetic oil and forget it.

Or
hoses, fittings, oil thermostat and something else to break, fix or leak

Good luck!

[FUNFER2]

If you're not racing, hook it up for original looks. You don't want the oil temp too cool anyway.

[Dimis]

Like everything in this world - if it ain't broken, fix it till it does!

[patrickt]

I have mine hooked up... and it's really not needed. If it wasn't already hooked up, I wouldn't go to the trouble of hooking it up.

[ZOERA-SC7XX]

Oil works better when hot. You just don't want it to get too hot. If you're just driving on the street, you probably don't need it (it does look nice in that cutout area). If you are racing, however, I would hook it up.

[YerDugliness]

Originally Posted by priobe

My oil temp never gets past 220.

The car is mostly street driven, so should I just leave it for show or put it to use.

I would say you don't need it...leave it there for the appearance, but if you hook it up you increase the complexity of the oiling system considerably, and also increase the chances of mechanical malfunction.

Cheers!

Doug

[Rick Parker]

While on this subject, has anyone here used the type of radiator with the oil cooler tubes built into one of the tanks of the radiator? They have quicker warmup and keep fluid temps close.??

[Bobcat]

Rick ... I used to work on a lot of hydraulic systems and the biggest disadvantage we saw with the water cooled heat exchangers was when the failed .... you got water in the hydraulic system , and that was not good . The advantage to a water to oil exchanger was that it is more effective than an air to air unit . With modern materials and construction techniques , they are pretty reliable now ..... millions of cars have used that method to cool the transmission oil with very few problems.

[Jerry Clayton]

For my car I have a C&R aluminum Nascar type radiator with the oil cooler in one end tank---It is a double pass crossflow rad that goes across one half then down the oil heat exchanger and then back across the bottom half----I use the word heat exchanger because I believe that the rad will heat the oil to the temp it needs more than cooling it--

[trg-42]

Originally Posted by Rick Parker

While on this subject, has anyone here used the type of radiator with the oil cooler tubes built into one of the tanks of the radiator? They have quicker warmup and keep fluid temps close.??

I have used the C&R external ( not part of radiator, but rather you put the heat exchanger between rad and water pump )

External Heat Exchanger « C&R Racing

Like all C&R products they are top notch ( Nascar , Sprint etc ) but pretty pricey.

[Rick Parker]

Bobcat:
I understand they are more efficient, and also the potential issues. I have considered doing this myself.

[RICK LAKE]

I have thought about switching over to a exchnager for my car. I do 95% racing.Heres the things
Up side oil heats up faster and gets to the best temp for lubing, protection amd helps remove heat from the coolant when oil is cool and motor is hot.

Down side, Need a large radiator to help cool both fluids?? Could have an overheating problem. Failure of the cooler to keep oil in the oil side and coolant in the coolant side. I also run high pressure for the oiling system. Most runs are running 80 psi cold, I'm in the 135-138 psi range. Couple of the guys here have bypass valves to control the amout of oil into the cooler. I don't have enough info on this.

Just about every truck and car with an auto trans has a cooler in the one or both sides of the radiator, Millions and millions. The failure rate I have seen over the last 25 years is 3 due to major overheating of a motor.

Guess next thing is to look at price??? Rick L.

[FUNFER2]

With a lot of us just running on the street, what concerns me is the oil getting too cool. Like Rick said, most production cars have a exchanger and most have no issues, and have a computer to regulate the water & oil in a loop, but I wonder that since most cobras do not utilize a computer, we would have to religh on watching our gauges, manually shutting off the lines or a system like from Canton.

Factory cars also use less air coming in from the grill to cool the radiator and exchanger and run higher temps than many years ago.

With Rick and others that actually race their cobras, a better cooling system is needed for water, oil and transmission.

I guess my point is, even with hard street use, I don't think we really need a oil cooler or a heat exchanger running on the street ?

Is it all worth it ?

I do have a oil pressurized system from Canton, but that's a different ball game. It could lead to more leaks, but I figure that's needed more for safety than a cooler. I have the Mocal that's installed for looks not for function, people just like seeing it and the twin fan assembly.

[Snakebit]

I hooked up the oil cooler on my ERA and the oil did not get above 180*, so I cut a piece of plexiglass and mounted it in front of the oil cooler. The oil temp runs 210* to 220* and the plexiglass looks invisible. If I decide to run on the track, I just remove 2 small screws holding the plexiglass and the oil cooler is functional.

[lovehamr]

I use the Canton thermostat and it works perfectly.

[FUNFER2]

Originally Posted by lovehamr

I use the Canton thermostat and it works perfectly.

Do you have any pic's of your system ? (just curious how the Canton works)

[lovehamr]

Originally Posted by FUNFER2

Do you have any pic's of your system ? (just curious how the Canton works)

I don't have any pics from up underneath yet but I'll give it a shot.
This is the thermo itself showing oil flow. It doesn't open the ports to the cooler until the oil is @215 degrees. BTW there are larger copies of all these pics in my gallery should you need them.


Mine is mounted horizontally on a lower cross member with the cooler ports facing down. The plumbing then goes under the steering rack but above the sway bar and through the radiator bulkhead low on either side.




In this pic if you look under the front end you can see some of the plumbing coming from the cooler to the thermostat. BTW, it did have to open up and use the cooler on my runs through the Tail of the Dragon. That was “spirited” driving but not even close to race pace and the air temp was in the 50s.


Here you can see that my cooler lines pass through the rad bulkhead much lower than you see most Cobras and that's because of the lines coming from the thermo rather than the remote oil filter.


Did that fill in the grey areas?

[FUNFER2]

Yes it did, thank you !