1- It's an easy fix for my OE oil pressure switch, I can put that back in its rightful place and use the 1/8NPT port on a new sandwich plate instead for my new SPA/ECU sensors. (this is the main reason)
2- In a (possibly futile attempt) to address oil temperatures. I noted this earlier in the year when my front mounted oil coolers sprang a leak that my car ran very cool. Both coolant and oil temperatures are generally very low. On track this works out fine, as my "on it" temps are just about in the ballpark for where I'd want them... but even then, my oil temps are on the low side.
On a cold/wet motorway my oil temps are scarily low. After driving to Oulton on Monday night last week, it was 7-8degrees ambient temperature and after 70 miles of cruising at the NSL my oil temps had never gone above 60, and were only just in the low 50's by the end of the journey. Even on a summers day, cruise temps are unlikely to be higher than low 60s. I know measuring in the sump is probably the coldest place to do it, so I do keep that in mind - but I still feel the car is way overcooled.
I was talked out of swapping to laminova earlier in the year, which may well be a good move - but I still had it in mind to look at some other options to try and speed up oil temps and allow them to stabilise a bit higher.
So here we go, I won't take credit for R&D on this as it's been discussed to the death on Lotustalk but generally the results are supposed to be good. All (most?) oil sandwich plate thermostats will let through a constant 'dribble' to prevent a temperature shock when the stat' finally opens, but it seems like the OEM Toyota/Lotus one is just "too dribbly". Perhaps they're not all as bad as each other, but mine certainly seems to let substantial quantities of oil through as soon as the car is running (tracked via a trick IR camera I happen to have lying around) and the coolers start warming up immediately. My hope is that this Mishimoto one reduces this effect a bit, and minimises temperature loss before the thermostat threshold (85deg).
I've had Mishimoto plates on a couple of project cars now, never failed me yet and seem to be a bit of a 'go-to' option nowadays.
The main challenge for fitment is the oil cooler lines, they have a 5/8BSP fitting and the Mishimoto plate takes M20. M20 x 5/8BSP male-male connectors are apparently very rare and hard to get hold of. I ended up asking a local hydraulics/engineering firm to put some together for me. Downside is they're a bit longer than they would normally be, but there's still just about enough clearance. Another plan would be to swap the line fittings for something more metric... maybe that's a future fix.
OEM sensor needs a 26mm/1" socket for removal, then it pops right off.
My plan is to retain the remote t'piece and blank off one of the holes (as the OEM switch has gone back to its proper home). This lets me position the sensor away from the sandwich plate and also gives me scope to add another sensor in the near future for ECU logging.
I've not really tested yet, I've got some other tinkering to do - but it holds pressure at least and doesn't piss oil everywhere when the car is running on axle stands...
I'm a little sceptical about whether it'll sort the temps out or not, but will report back either way. Oh, and my dash oil "idiot light" now works again
