What are the water to oil coolers like?

The Oily Bits S1 Specific Topics
1

[image]http://www.elise-shop.com/images/WOCLOW.jpg[/image]

What are these oil coolers like? Are they good or just a waste of money? I will prob be doing 3 or for track days next year. I am running 195bhp VHPD engine. Already have a remote thermostat and will prob upgrade to an alloy rad over the winter.

Thanks
J

2

How much does that cost?

3

They are around �280

About the same as an air to air cooler maybe even a little more but allot easier to install.

4

Erm… S1 Exigs have an oil cooler as standard, you don’t need one of those (Elises don’t, so it depends which car you’re starting from).

At the end of the day you want to get rid of excess heat by means of a radiator, and if you have a water/oil cooler you’re just using the one radiator in front to dissipate this total heat (oil/water cooler is just ameans to get one system close to the other’s temp).
If you have a separate oil cooler you have an extra means for heat dissipation.

Now, the std oil radiator (thin and long) is not that good as many have found out. But I prefer the idea of a separate air/oil cooler (as do many race teams).
So I followed SeanB on his find of a bigger oil cooler, moved to under the water radiator. Dropped the oil temps about 30 DegC (Sean’s find, I didn’t have an oil temp gauge before installing)

So, since you already have an oil cooler up front, why not just change its type and change it to a bigger one? About 100quid IIRC.


Pesky, Honda engines should already include a water/oil cooler as std, AFAIU.

5

Here, searched it for you…

http://www.exiges.com/ubbthreads/showflat.php?Cat=&Number=39088&page=26&view=collapsed&sb=5&o=&fpart=1

6

So, since you already have an oil cooler up front

Uldis, unfortunately Jamos drives an Elise not an Exige. I asked how much the system cost to get a comparison between that & the cost of fitting an air/oil cooler.I reckon the latter would be cheaper.

7

Th advantage with and oil/water intercooler is that is seriously reduces the time taken to warm the oil to a decent temperature since it will dump coolant temperature into the oil when the oil is cold, this is very useful indeed. It does not require any ducted airflow to do this which makes it a good package for any mid-engined installation. IMO the stock cooling system has plenty of capacity.

Dave

8

Well yes, and if he doesn’t currently have any, the oil/water cooler makes a lot of sense.

9

dave told me to get one of these, i purchased it from geary, but it will not fit correctly to an exige so i sent it back…g

10

Giles,

Where did the problem lie?

Dave

11

Hi Dave

With the exige having a standard oil cooler in the front, apparently it would lower the oil pressure (or cool the oil) too much if you added the laminova, also it appeared to be a pig to fit behind the manifold (i was using a larger bore, longer pipe unit)on the exige. these things coupled together made me thnk twice. (i think it was simon scutham who told me about the oil pressure thing, don’t know how much truth is in it…but thinking now maybe you could fit it at the front of the car instead of the standard cooler…oh well

g

12

oh and also if you want to fit it along with the standard unit the standard oil take off will not fit with the mocal one aswell due to space limitations in that area.

13

I see…

It would be better fitted as an alternative to the stock cooler rather than as an addition.

Dave

14

Thanks for the reply guys,

Doesn’t the sandwich plate run a thermostat so how would this help heat the oil up as the thermostat would be closed when the oil is cold?

Thanks
James

15

no on the unit i purchased this was not the case. The sandwich plate was just a take off with no thermostat at all.

Giles

16

The whole point of an intercooler is that it doesn’t need a thermostat and that it will modulate the oil temperature to near the water temperature, I.E. it will warm the oil when it is cold and cool it when warm.

Dave