A2O/W2O cooler in hot climate
 

I'm looking for an oil cooler for my car. It's my DD car with occasionally track 4-5 times a year. The average ambient temp is 28C-35C. I know OEM style(NED kit) is suit for DD but I have no idea will it work well while coolant is already taxed ? For A2O, only Japanese brands are available(Greddy,HKS) where I live.

What type of oil cooler you guys think that suit for me ? :popcorn:

I'll summon @Ultramaroon for you ......he has an oil cooler he is happy with ..... :thumbsup:


humfrz

Oh, boy. Mine is not something you can get off the shelf.

The water-oil coolers are nice for stabilizing temps while cruising but worthless for anything more than that.

I googled quickly but did not find anything on A20 or W20. What is that?

I will eventually point you towards the Setrab documentation. It is very helpful.

A20 or W20: Air to oil or Water to oil
I'm not sure why you are saying water-oil are worthless except for stabilizing temp. There are one or 2 threads on the Subaru (forester) oil cooler, and people seem to be happy with it, and IIRC it lower temp even on the track. The OEM water radiator has enough capacity to accomodate the increase in heat from the water/oil cooler on a stock NA car. Forced induction it's another ball game.

'Worthless' was a bit extreme. I'll say 'inadequate' instead. When I was searching for a solution, I read the same Forester threads. I was disappointed when I saw the logs.

This is not an issue with the power shed by the engine cooling system. I agree that it was designed beautifully. There's just not enough power going through the oil cooler. It wasn't designed that way.

Compare the temps recorded in those threads to the corresponding pressures recorded in the oil-pressure-versus-temp threads.

IMO, for maximum efficiency when used primarily as a daily, taking into consideration the cost of oil changes, an adequately-sized A2O easily beats the Forester cooler.

Could you elaborate a little. I'm not sure I understand how the cost of oil changes affect the oil cooler? Would you need more oil or more frequent oil changes with one type of oil cooler vs another?

I'd guess more oil ...... :iono:


humfrz

Aha! You read much more carefully than I did when I got called into this thread.

I didn't catch OP's concern about the cooling system being taxed. :thumbsup:

Let's start by assuming that we are primarily concerned with maintaining adequate oil pressure. The engine was designed to be able to use 0-20. That helps with fuel efficiency.

IMO, Even for a stock engine, the Forester cooler doesn't control oil temp well enough for extended operation using 0-20 on full boil. Need to keep that pressure up.

5-30 is a smidge more expensive to run because of the increased friction. As a daily, I'd rather take advantage of ability to run 0-20 all the time. Either way, at the temps seen with the Forester cooler, even synthetic oil breaks down way more quickly than if temp is held evenly-ish with water temp - about 190F. That is the objective of the Forester cooler - as a daily, not a track tool.

I'll go into greater detail about my setup if anyone's curious but aside from that, I'll just say that this engine can dump a lot of heat into the oil. 30K BTU/Hr is not overkill.