Wes Bender wrote:Nope. Same desire out here in Arizona where the floors are solid and the engine tin too. I'm not so sure that the solution isn't a form of thermostatically operated shutter for the oil cooler. Of course, still allowing air to reach #3 and 4 cylinders. My money would be on Ron LaDow developing such a device.
And this is similar to what I mentioned some time ago. With my aluminum oil cooler and remote full flow filter it is nearly impossible to get the oil up to anywhere near 180*F with a 32*F ambient. The oil to the cooler needs to be restricted or completely shut off. Reducing fan speed and air flow would possibly jepordize cylinder cooling and still not get the oil hot enough.
My idea would entail adding a machined valve block to fit BETWEEN the case and the oil cooler. Of course a shorter oil cooler would also need to be designed to keep it from hitting the fan shroud. A valve used in Lycoming aircraft engines termed "Vernatherm" has a wax element that allows oil to bypass the cooler (parallel flow actually) until the temp reaches 180*F when it shifts and forces all of the oil through the cooler. I think this very same valve could be installed in a 1" thick block possibly. This would require some engineering expertise but result in a solution that almost every engine would benefit from (you could sell a lot of them possibly). And you would not notice the modification for those that want to keep the engine looking original.
Another possibility might be to shut off the air flow to just the cooler and not the cylinders or to the car heater. You could possibly have a narrow slot in the fan shroud very close to the cooler air inlet and insert a thin "blade" into the slot to block the airflow. If the oil got to hot you would have to pull it out partially or completely. I don't like altering the fan shroud by it might work, but it also might reduce the air flow to the #3/#4 cylinders.
Hi if you have a remote filter you could install a remote cooler with a thermostat and eliminate the engine mounted one. You might have to reduce the flow to 3-4 since the cooler was missing or leave a dummy cooler in the shroud. the optimum would be to mount the cooler in the front air flow and install a fan for long stationary periods but even mounting in front of the shroud would possibly work.
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Jacques, that is to complicated. If it was easy to get at I would just put some aluminum foil tape over the oil cooler to block off some or most of the airflow. The aluminum cooler has better heat rejection than the original so that aggravates the problem in the winter.
not pretty or scientific, but it would block 90% of the cold air coming into the engine bay. tidy it up a bit and use a couple of zip ties to secure it and take it out for a spin to see if your engine warms up.
Cliff, I agree that the aluminum coolers are almost too efficient. You don't want to block off too much air though. Cylinders 3 & 4 still need plenty of air, even though the oil cooler may not. I've looked seriously into modifying the fan housing so that I could bypass some of the air past the cooler. Whether it would be automatically or manually regulated is something that I haven't considered yet.
I'd rather work on routing the cooling air than fooling around with rerouting the oil. Porsche found that didn't work too well. Oil is too critical to these engines to be introducing potential problems.
Some days it's just not worth chewing through the restraints.....
Wes Bender wrote:Cliff, I agree that the aluminum coolers are almost too efficient. You don't want to block off too much air though. Cylinders 3 & 4 still need plenty of air, even though the oil cooler may not. I've looked seriously into modifying the fan housing so that I could bypass some of the air past the cooler. Whether it would be automatically or manually regulated is something that I haven't considered yet.
I'd rather work on routing the cooling air than fooling around with rerouting the oil. Porsche found that didn't work too well. Oil is too critical to these engines to be introducing potential problems.
Wes, one of the problems is it takes the oil a fairly long time to warm up, whereas the cylinder head temperatures come up right away. Also, I think there is an unbalance between oil temp and CHT with cold air, i.e., The cylinders need more air than the oil cooler does. Regulating oil flow through the cooler would help that and diverting oil around the cooler would not hurt or change the oil flow to the rest of the engine at all. It just wouldn't be that easy to do with the stock cooler configuration. And the question would be is there still enough cooler capacity with high ambient temps with a smaller aluminum cooler.
The alternative method of regulating the airflow through the cooler should work, but how do you do that without adversely affecting the cooling of #3/#4? And it needs to change between winter and summer.
Reread my post. I'm looking to bypass the cooler by diverting some of the air around it. It would still go to #3 & #4.
Actually, this whole discussion, while interesting, is probably moot. Are any of us actually going to do any of the suggested things? I'm not going to. My car's oil isn't going to get as hot in the winter as it does in the summer. I drive my C just about every day. I still take the filler cap off after a drive to let as much of the moisture evaporate as possible. That and change the oil regularly and there shouldn't be any problems.
Some days it's just not worth chewing through the restraints.....
