Well the car is in bits, front clam is now on the floor.
And the N/S oil cooler is off and it has a nice hole in it, if it is stone damage or it just failed I will never know as it is in such a state.
but what to do?
Junk the air con fit a laminova oil cooler and maybe loop in an extra charge cooler pre rad or 2 where the oil coolers are?
As above but put 2 extra small engine coolant rads where the oil coolers are?
Leave it alone and just replace the busted oil cooler?
My last option, remove and clean all the debris out of the current rads, block all the gaps round the outside of the rads to make sure all the air goes through the rads to improve cooling capacity as much as possible the remove the oil coolers and fit a laminova? this will mean I get to keep my air con but does I risk the car running too hot?
I just don’t know
PS John you nearly owed me £1mil! The pipe to the engine came of perfect, but the connection to the 2nd came off in one piece, but there are no longer any threads on the rad itself!
Wouldn’t switch to laminova unless ditching the air con. Adding extra coolant rads doesn’t seem like any benefit. Don’t see the benefit over retaining the oil coolers.
So the current consensus is to put it back together with a new oil cooler, I am however going to clean and seal the other rads, I can see how doing this will help the marginal cooling capacity I have, long term I might ditch the air con, just can’t bring myself to do it just yet.
I run two laminovas one for eng oil and one for gear box
No aircon , 50mm triple pass rad and a 32mm full side chargecooler rad
Anglesey saw temps of 97
Refit standard oil coolers for now!!!
I think this tells the story, no laminova for me on the engine oil.
Just going to fit a new OEM oil cooler clean the debris from the current rads and do a much better job of sealing them so all the air goes through them rather than around in the rather large gaps between the rads and the crash structure.
I realised just how well they work when I added the gearbox cooler on with the laminova, it takes vast amounts of heat out and transfers it into the water, that was when I needed to upgrade the rad to triple pass!
Happy to wait and see what comes along, but I still reckon extra water rads where the oil rads are might work well? Or run the charge cooler pre rads in there instead?
I agree Ade. The water pipes for the water/CC (and aircon) need to go to the front of the car, so an extra diversion through , perhaps, 1 front side mounted rad would add extra cooling power. Probably enough to laminova the oil and get rid of all of those pipes.
seriously considering putting my CC rad under the crash structure ( SSC do this over here ) - maybe that could work Ade ?
Will have to re locate my ( standard Exige S1 ) oil cooler somewhere … sounds like a laminova is not the way to go … so side mounted cooler as the Audi car seems best way … alternative is something like TTS have done but its letting the hot air out without cutting holes and leaving out arch liners that’s the problem …
Well in the end I just replaced the holed oil cooler with one from Dave @ Seriously Lotus
Much cursing and swearing happened but all in, whilst I had the clam off I also removed the radiator stack and used stick on foam strip to seal the charge cooler rad to the crash structure all the way around, there is huge scope for “leakage” between the rads and the crash structure, I hope this will help with cooling efficiency
