Inexpensive Oil Coolers
 

I'm getting ready to pull the trigger on a Mishimoto and was on Amazon and noticed some other brands that were about a hundred bucks? Any experience with those? Why are they so damn cheap? A small radiator and some hoses and a few fittings. Where is the big difference?

Are you tracking your car? If not, look into the NED oil cooler or source the parts for the Forester XT kit. If you are tracking your car, I would not go cheap on an oil cooler. That's kinda like going cheap on your cars health insurance....

Tracking. Wondering where all the extra money is in the 500.00 plus units?

Good question, but like many things, the pieces make up the cost, but also name brand, R&D, and of course profit margin.

Build your own with a setrab core and buy a thermostatic sandwich plate. For nice -8 or-10AN fittings, hoses, you'll be at $150. Sandwich plate probably $75. decent 19 row Setrab is about $200-$250.

If you want leaky -AN fittings, poor fitment and no brackets, go ahead and buy the eBay kits. You'd be surprised how easy it is to have oil leaking from an oil cooler fitting and while it pools up in the bumper, you won't notice until it spills over. If you spin a bearing from oil loss because you didn't notice a bad leak at the track, we'll be here.

mocal thermostatic sandwich plate
10AN radiator of your choice.
10AN Fittings and Hoses/clamps
High temp thread oil resistant thread sealant
Can peice a solid one together for 250$ all in.
Once you decide on mounting location you can go to hardware store to buy appropriate brackets to mount.

You pay for name brand, mounting hardware to have direct bolt on for specific car and of course profit margins.

Name brand whores checking in 3....2....
Gotta pay good money to get those stickers to put all over the car for the car shows so the other bros can drool over.
86TOYO2k17 and DarkPira7e nailed it. Thread over.

I wanted all the parts together. I didn't wanna spend my time ordering and measuring then redoing shit. If you want to do that, go for it.

Can't buy the parts I wanted.


https://i.imgur.com/vsGMXqm.jpg

This right here...

...as if tracking and/or boosting this platform wasn't already problematic enough, go ahead and add more headaches by trying to piece together a kit and run into issues during installation.

Where do you find a thermostatic sandwich plate for $75?

They have a lot of offbrand/eBay ones for 35-40$ but I wouldn’t trust those.

Mocal is what most kits use 78$
https://www.maperformance.com/produc...SABEgJ2rPD_BwE

I got mine from driftmotion for 90$ because i was lazy to source the two 10AN fittings, they sell with it.

Although you do need an adapter/spacer that’ll increase cost like 50$

You get what you pay for for the most part. You do not want to buy the least expensive components or the most expensive. The least expensive you lose quality, the most expensive you are generally paying extra for a name. Do a lot of research to be an educated buyer. With a Kit you are paying for R&D and packaging. If you are good at fabricating you can design your own and save some money. I ended up going with the Mishimoto oil cooler and sandwich plate then fabricating my own lines. I have fabricated lots of AN lines in my life so that part is no big deal. If you have not, get with someone that can teach you.

That is the oil cooler I wish I would have bought!