CSHENG
CSHENG New Reader
8/22/24 10:34 a.m.

Hi everyone. I was planning to run a water- oil cooler on my weekend/ track car. 

I have been searching for coolant route to create a greater temperature delta for the oil cooler. I Found one from honda fire blade forum which coolant will pass thru oil cooler before reaching the engine itself

I have read that greater Temperature delta give better heat exchange that gives me an idea of the coolant route. I wonder if there's anyone tried this setup.

Using a portion of coolant after radiator to cool the oil .

 

gearheadE30
gearheadE30 Dork
8/22/24 12:08 p.m.

Any time you split coolant flow into parallel paths like that, you have to be a bit careful. You need to make sure you actually get flow at all conditions. I've seen cases where the pressure drops get messed up so one of the coolers is completely stagnant and the other is full flow. Typically the best way around this is to return output coolant as close as possible to the water pump inlet for a good pressure signal. 

I never recommend removing thermostats. 

Is there a particular reason you want to go water to oil vs air to oil? Air cooling is generally both sufficient and much easier to integrate. 

The easy button water to oil option is usually to find a radiator that already has an integrated oil (engine or transmission) cooler integrated into one of the endcaps. 

GameboyRMH
GameboyRMH MegaDork
8/22/24 10:51 p.m.

+1 for running an oil-to-air cooler if you can, that would give better oil cooling with less oil pressure drop and avoid giving your radiator more heat to deal with.

CSHENG
CSHENG New Reader
8/23/24 3:54 a.m.

In reply to gearheadE30 :

Thanks for the input. The flow conditions that you mentioned reminds me of current doesn't like resistance(oil cooler passage) , it may leads to less moving coolant pass thru the cooler or worst stagnation. Am I on the same page?

I will run a thermostat with low temperature opening one like 68C I believe. The image is just a simplified one

Regarding the coolant outlet location, I think I can get the outlet quite close to the coolant pump itself but as you mentioned the coolant route worries me a little.

There are few reason I want to try out the water- oil style oil cooling.

​​​firstly, I and my friends have been using air- oil cooler since since we started messing around with cars. I have never tried or really dig deep into the water-oil cooling which we usually ditched . I kinda want to experiment a bit with it. My car is a little rather stockish 140whp 4age na Toyota corolla, and I was wondering if water -oil cooler will be sufficient 

secondly. As I went on the internet I found few interesting super taikyu endurance race car don't actually run a air-oil cooler instead they use the OEM water-oil cooler to run hours and hours of race (it may due to track regulation I am not sure) I also heard they don't run thermostat for endurance race car but They do use a restrictor plate and radiator blank to control the temperature.

 Third reason is I was more worried with any impact on the air to oil cooler (track limit gravel will punch a hole in the cooler itself or maybe frontal contact during races damaging the pipeline or oil cooler) .that will get things out of hand real quick. I was thinking if I run a water-oil cooler maybe I have higher chance to walk away with engine damage relative to oil pressure or crawl back behind pit wall if it's close to me

CSHENG
CSHENG New Reader
8/23/24 4:59 a.m.

In reply to GameboyRMH :

Hi thanks for the reply . Nice trueno you have there. I have been using air- oil cooler. Just want to experiment with stuff 

Appleseed
Appleseed MegaDork
8/23/24 8:57 a.m.

In reply to CSHENG :

If someone else has done it, successfully, as you have found with a few endurance racers, copy what they have done. Like exactly. Bolt for bolt.

CSHENG
CSHENG New Reader
8/24/24 4:35 a.m.

In reply to Appleseed :

You're right. There's no much point to reinvent the wheels

Just that I was wondering if there's still some room to improve. Even if it's only 3 to 5 percent gains I will be thrilled to try it out.

Thanks for the words tho

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