I am getting ready to swap over the FMII turbo kit from the NB Miata I recently bought to the NB Miata I already own. The turbo car sale included a yet-to-be installed oil cooler (this kit: Setrab oil cooler kit). Once the turbo set up is moved over, where would I mount the oil cooler? The car does not have A/C but will have a FMIC.
Pic of the oil cooler set up:
In reply to dyintorace:
Does your front bumper have foglights? If so, maybe remove them and mount it behind a foglight opening?
Make sure you add a thermostat to that oil cooler setup. Ideally one that doesn't open until 200 - 215*. Too cold oil is a bad thing.
NickD wrote: In reply to dyintorace: Does your front bumper have foglights? If so, maybe remove them and mount it behind a foglight opening?
Unfortunately not. 
Thinking about it, if you can't find a spot with airflow to mount that, look into selling it and going with an oil / water cooler setup if you've got enough radiator capacity. That also gets rid of the need for a thermostat, as coolant temp is about right for oil temp.
Yep definitely add a thermostat, there are sandwich plates with integrated thermostats so you don't have to make a rat's nest of oil lines with an external one.
The best place to mount any new cooler is off to the side somewhere, completely separate from your current radiator stack. If that's not possible I'd say you should mount this at the back of the stack, behind the radiator. The oil cooler runs hotter than any other cooler (except, potentially, a PS cooler) and on top of that, this one is fairly large and of a good design. If it were a tiny and/or inefficient cooler I might tell you to put it up front (on the same level as the FMIC, or behind it if necessary) to squeeze every drop of cooling power from it.
The typical oil/water OC setup is not very effective compared to an oil/air setup. It would have to share heat with the engine coolant which is not a whole lot cooler than the oil. I'd recommend a remote ducted oil/air cooler over an oil/water setup.
Here's a test showing how well a back-of-the-stack oil/air cooler can work:
We have the thermostats in stock as well as mounting brackets to put the cooler on the steering rack.
The kit comes with this:
The Mocal Thermostatic Oil Sandwich plate was picked because of it’s large success in motorsport and the compact integration of the thermostatic valve.
Is that the same thing as having a thermostat?
Thanks for the tip Keith. I'll check out the steering rack bracket you guys sell.
In reply to dyintorace:
Yep, that sounds like there's a thermostat built into the adapter plate. Might want to find out what temp it starts to open and if it's changeable. A lot are 180*, which is too cold IMO.
dyintorace wrote:NickD wrote: In reply to dyintorace: Does your front bumper have foglights? If so, maybe remove them and mount it behind a foglight opening?Unfortunately not.
If it's an NB1, the fog lights were all port or dealer-installed options so the bezels are fairly easy to retrofit. Mazda sells the bezels pre-painted, you take a hole saw to the bumper cover, slide the bezels through, then put in a little glue and some clips on the inside. The bezel has flare on the outside that covers the rough edge of the cut. No paint/etc required. I'm using them for brake ducts, so I skipped buying all of the internal bracketry for the fog lights themselves.
As far as oil coolers go, mine is mounted in front of the motor using the brackets that FM sells. Unfortunately, there's only enough room for a 13-row cooler there (or it hits the sway bar), and that (combined with it getting fairly hot air) means that it's not enough for my car at the track, so finding a new location for a bigger cooler is on my list of things to do. The FM location might be enough for you -- depends on how much power you're making.
rslifkin wrote: In reply to dyintorace: Yep, that sounds like there's a thermostat built into the adapter plate. Might want to find out what temp it starts to open and if it's changeable. A lot are 180*, which is too cold IMO.
Yeah 180F is not ideal, but oddly enough is the most common temperature for oil cooler thermostats. I think it's because in practice, with typical oil cooler sizes, the oil temperature always seems to climb well above thermostat temperature under most conditions, so 180 was generally "good enough." If you're running the engine flat-out the amount of heat being dumped into the oil will keep it well above 200, often in the ballpark of 230, and on the street if you're in traffic and your oil cooler doesn't have its own fan, oil temps will easily climb to 200. The trouble comes in highway cruising.
In reply to GameboyRMH:
That, plus the cranky old hot-rodders that think colder is better and run 160 t-stats and think an engine is overheated and should be scrap metal by 200 
On my 1.6 FMIII NA on the street, I didn't need much oil cooling (so a thermostat is important), and I think the FM steering rack bracket would have been ideal. Running hard on track, I really struggled to get enough cooling. After many iterations, I ended up with a Racing Beat Type 2 nose, with a small Earl's cooler behind each side duct, plumbed in parallel. As long as I kept the rev limit at or below about 6800, all was well.
In reply to dyintorace:
Apologies for resurrecting a relatively old thread - but I'm dealing with this right now, did you end up getting your kit installed? I picked up the Trackspeed Engineering 25-row kit and I'm waiting on foglight bezels from Treasure Coast Miata to show up, then we'll be cutting up the bumper, dropping those in, then fabbing a bracket to put it in the wheel well.
You'll need to log in to post.
