oil coolers

[dubber91]

righty i have a second gen motor that i gotta keep cool......water is taken care of its oil im concerned about.
Now on the car as we speak i have a standard oil cooler fitted, but because of its size and shape its not cooling well...

so despiute a lot of what im sure is good advice i went out and bought this:

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=270030450683&ssPageName=ADME:B:EOIBSA:UK:12

its a 50 row setrab oil cooler. Now this is one of the biggest oil coolers you can buy and is certainly bigger than any available in aftermarket oil cooler kits. What does everyone think? Will it keep a 13b NA cool?

Second off, as for oil lines and fittings, do they need to be made of will some oil line with the correct fittings jubilee-clipped onto them be ok? who makes up oil lines like this?

cheers guys

Steve

[nikp]

Surely if you have good water cooling and it\'s working fine, then your oil is being cooled well too?

As oil is the first contributory factor in cooling an engine, which then tranfers it\'s heat to the coolant, which then gets hot, and requires cooling itself.

Then again, maybe i\'m wrong, cos using that theory, why do we have oil coolers at all!? :p

[antnicuk]

The stock oil cooler would normally be fine, iirc you have fitted this motor to a beetle?,  is this why you are having probs?,  not enough airflow?

Can you not put it somewhere where it will get more air?, (not teaching to suck eggs)

One of the things you have to be careful of is that the stock oil cooler has a little thermostat built in and this diverts the oil until its hot.  This is very important as otherwise the oil pump cant push the cold oil through the cooler and engine and you end up starving the engine of oil when its cold. ( we found out the hard way on the tripple and killed it)

Another option would be to fit a pair of FD oil coolers. You should be able to get a set quite cheap with all the lines and you may be able to place them somewhere to get air through them.

The lines need to be made properly and not just jubilee clipped, someone like pirtec can make them.  The oil pressure is too high for jubilee clips.

Good luck

[Devil\'s Refugee]

I think Ross at Dragon is flogging a set of twin FD3S uprated oil coolers, you could perhaps modify these to suit ?

[dubber91]

well i dont see why the setrab oil cooler wouldnt be big enough.... ita the biggest any company does, so surely it must offer an improvement over stock? The main thing is the fact that it is easier to package around......it\'ll fit easier around the back end of the beetle and its easier to fit a decent sized fan to also.

The primary cooling of an engine is water cooling.....only when the oil temp rises does the water temp get higher...

Steve

[Martiny]

Surely if you have good water cooling and it\'s working fine, then your oil is being cooled well too?

As oil is the first contributory factor in cooling an engine, which then tranfers it\'s heat to the coolant, which then gets hot, and requires cooling itself.

Then again, maybe i\'m wrong, cos using that theory, why do we have oil coolers at all!? :p

Nik.
In our engine the oil is VERY VERY important for cooling. It cools the inside of the Rotors, and probably helps the crank stay cool, too. Our water flows around the outside of the engine only. The oil takes care of the inside. Therefore Steve is correct to be concerned about the oil cooling. I suppose the correct thing to do, though, would be to monitor the oil temp somehow.

I would find it very difficult to believe that an aftermarket oil cooler is better than the stock Mazda one.

[MikeLMR]

The standard 2nd gen oil cooler is massive ... everyone seems to reckon it\'s very good.  It\'s got to be a case of where it\'s placed rather than the oil cooler itself.

[dubber91]

yeah i dont doubt that.....but its difficult to do as neatly as i like because of the space restrictions at the back.....

Thats why i have bought the 50 row cooler.....its got twice the surface area and the same thickness, but the shape is much easier to package... plus i can fit a bigger fan

Steve

[travellinbob]

I did see a rally bug in oz a few years back that had the oil cooler mounted where the back seat would have been. It had fresh air being drawn down to it through a vent in a perspex rear quarter windo and beneath the cooler were some holes to vent the then heated up air. Think it also might have run a few very small fans also. Must agree with mike about the importance of cooler placement too. Can you run a series 3 12a cooler on a 13b? These are the ones that sit under the oil filter. If you had one of those and also another then surely it would be ore than enough.
 cheers, michael.

[dubber91]

yeah thats my thaughts......possibly this setrab, see how it goes, then maybe a water/oil cooler?

Steve

[Grizzly]

I think Ducting is the Key!!! you can fit it just about anywhere if you have plenty of Ducting and cool air going through it.

Of course the ideal way would be to dry sump it and fit an oil cooler under the engine where the sump used to be, but thats also expencive.

[chrno]

Not that it\'s the same thing in any way. But I had a 23 row setrab cooler on my SR20DET, and it cooled SOOOO well. Both in regular traffic where the oiltemp was very low, and on track it stayed at.. hmm.. I can\'t reallty remember.. but everyone I talked to said they where impressed.. And the cooler was fitted behind a APEXi Fmic..  My first reaction to a 50row cooler is that it must be HUGE!  Is it really neccesary to go that big?