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I woke up last night in a cold sweat, I had just thought of the best idea EVER!

Many of Us have pulled out the A/C units on our cars for various reasons...
1) it didn't work
2) it had a leak
3) To save weight
4) motor swap and forgot to but it back....

Whatever your reason for not having A/C I figured out a way to justify it. This will be EXTREMELY BENIFICIAL to you guys and gals with the "bee-hive" oil cooler...
Now you know where I am giong with this.... RIGHT?

You A/c System has a large 24X36 (or so) condensor rad to help in the freon cooling process. It is placed infront of your radiator. WHen you remove the A/C some probably just left this intact... or have it laying around collecting dust..

Well not anymore BABY!! There is a HUGE single core OIL cooler mounted right up front... With a little modification (removing the condesor can itself) a hacksaw and some tubing you have a HUGE front mount oil cooler.....

There you have it... Let the "you are a moron posts begin"....

you are a moron!

A little sooner then I expected but...."mkay" 1 down 297K to go.

:confused:

Interesting......any serious thoughts on this???

My friend did it today to his 79 trans am as a Transmission fluid cooler (400 big block), after I called him and made the sugestion. He claims his tranny temp has dropped drasticaly.. (auto tranny built for drag). He is stoked about my idea.......

Well try it i'm just thinking it wouldnt have the same flow charactaristics and might cause loss in oil pressure.

This sounds like a very interesting idea!

I would be a bit worried that the condensor`s passages would be a bit small for the oil to pass through? Obviouslly depends on what the Visocity is of the oil as well.

Hmmm,food for thought

Karis

The pasages were my first concern too but then I thought of how small all the passages in the block are and became less concerned... The oil runs through passages in your block smaller then the OMP lines..........

Some people have said aftermarket oil coolers aren't as good as stock Mazda air-oil coolers. If that's true, then I seriously doubt an AC condensor would be any better. However, using it as an auto tranny fluid cooler sounds reasonable.

I'm sorry you lost sleep over this idea. ;)

the condensor is way too restrctive to work as an engine cooler it won't flow the volume of oil required and will fry your engine due to lack of lube.

I think this is a brilliant idea none the less!Even if it would only work with the Auto trannies

Yer a moron.

:rolleyes:

Fuggin morons. WTH?

Though it may seem feasable, it is probably not the best idea in the world...

Air Conditioners circulate oil with the refigerent, and when there is a burn out gernerate acid and curclate that through the system untill it accually stops working.

So yes there is a single core rad up there but it is full of crap that is probably best not to have mixed with the engin oil and used in the engin.

The other problem is, like was mentioned earlyer is that the condesnor tube size is quite small...

I'm just kidding. I love it. I'm super lucky enough to have an older style cooler. But I think what gets me going more than the coolness of the idea is that this is exactly the type of thing I love to see- home-grown ingenuity.

Post this up on my floundering forum, would ya?http://sterlingmetalworks.com/bymcforum/index.php

Well the thing to do is flow the radiator and flow an oil cooler, right?
Any bad schtuff can be cleaned out, no?

its easier just to grab a real oil cooler from a FC/pre-82.

You're old & tired. ;)
C'mon, you remember the days of "Let's try it & see!".
Automatics were just coming out then, right?

:rlaugh: Yeah, I cant get more than 4 hours of sleep. I sleep late so I dont wake up in the middle of the night.

with the a/c system, the refrigerant goes to the condenser as high pressurized vapor and in return, comes back as liquid. without an independent pump, its not possible as the condenser sits higher than the engine.

Neat idea, but sounds like another source of oil leaks.

I don't think he wants to actaully use the compressor as a pump. IIUC, just route the oil through the AC gas cooler.

Yeah the A/c compressor would be gone.... I am going to take one out and have it flow tested... There is a local Rad shop that will do it for about $15.. I would definitley recommend having the unit flushed first.... We'll see what happens, KEEP THE COMMENTs COMMING.

Edit- Sterling I started a thread on your forum.

Wow, this the most active I've seen Sterling in around 9 months.
I still don't know how this will work, but hey lets try it and see. I mean lets have you try it and we will see.

I want your sub box(s)! Sell them to me, one million dollars sound good?

Sorry Hi-Jacking Again :(

Sorry about the response to a hijack. Tech, thanks for the comment. I sent you a PM.

how about grabing a radiator for an automatic 7 and running the oil thru the trans cooler lines?

If you really want to cool your oil, run 2 stock oil coolers in series. I've used a RX-4 and a GSL-SE (with t-stat removed and modified) in series. It ran cool except I took it off as I sold the SE oil cooler. I didnt feel its worth it for a street driven car.

Next time, when I complete my blow-thru turbo in the FB, I will do it again but with an RX-2 oil cooler. The RX-2 oil coolers were equipped with external oil-t-stat.

Again there are lots of way to do this, better ones too, but this is basically just an idea I hatched up and thought it would be an inexpensive way to cool the oil...

There are plenty of FC oil coolers in LA if you need some.

Ok what about the fittings? Can we use fairly standard fittings or are we going to have to call OddWidgetsRUs and pay more for fasteners than we'd pay for a regular oil cooler??

Are we thinking of running this inline or instead of the beehive?

As for crud in it, it couldn't be that bad. For one there wont be much in there and if there is its unlikely to be something dangerous to the engine. If it were a corrosive substance, it would probably eat the lines and bits in the A/C system.

When I first read this I thought RRTEC might have been thinking about mounting the coldside of the A/C system to the beehive. I'm glad I didn't have to teach him the laws of thermodynamics with a brick.

You hit the nail on the head. The pressure drop will be too much and oil starvation will kill it. Not a moron though, its good to be thinking like that. Shows your paying attention. :)

There was a discussion on that a while back. I believe the general consensus was that internal engine oil pressure can spike much greater than tranny fluid pressure, you'd just end up warming the engine oil, and it's just as good as the bee hive.

so hey is this a good idea for an auto tranny?? it seems like a nice big cooler and it will save me $$$$ my rx isnt an auto right now it will be...( i dont really wanna say why until i go find my fire suit but any opinions on the topic at hand would be helpful)

wonder if you can use the A/C system to cool an Intercooler

The engine oil coolers on a rotary are full flow, meaning that ALL the engine's oil runs through the cooler before reaching the engine.Its a lot of volume,pressure and heat.The AC condensor would be too restrictive,not to mention not having a thermostat to regulate temp and it probably lacks internal turbulators to break up the boundry layer which really helps with the heat tranfer.
Tranny coolers only have to pass bypassed fluid from the pump.Its a relatively small,low pressure amount compared to how much the tranny pump is moving.Ever noticed how flimsy and light AT cooler hoses and clamps are on some cars?

i think something like that maybe possible and before someone says that you can flow enough air thru the ac evaporator ford uses an intercooler on the supercharged svt cars stuffed between the supercharger and manifold that looks just like a heater core(just about the same size and same spaces between the fins)

it sounds like bigb is about to commit the ultimate rx7 sin

bigb3433,

You've got a Torque Converter that needs to be cooled along with transmission fluid.

For about $60.00 you can get a Transmission Cooler that keeps your fluid cool and at optimum temp.

B&M Hi-Tek/SuperCoolers

http://members.tccoa.com/ericpelezo/...20(Medium).jpg

my thinking is, the AC cools air right? so it sound cool and IC. i might "see what happens"

Post edited, pic works

well guys...its been done. dan atkins had this on his 88 repu (b series pickup with a supercharged 13b) pretty neat idea i thought. I thought that until he overheated going over every grade we came up to! Most of this had to do with the location of the condenser, right in front of the radiator, not enough cool air for the radiator. i got some cool pics of the overheating...i might post em later.

there ya go. I remember speaking with Dan about this problem during his drive at SS7. He was to stop by at my pad so I can install a FC OC. Glad he made him home.

NO NO NO. Low Impedance, I knows ya and I likes ya so I'll be nice. My physics is a bit rusty, those who are more scientifical please neaten up my work with the specifics of the laws of thermodynamics. It's also kinda late for me.

The short version is that we're dealing with a very lossy system. You will not get as much power out of cooling down the intercooler as it will take to run the A/C. Never ever. If you do, you're measuring it wrong or you've shattered several hundred years of science.

The longer less coherent explanation is that the a/c condensor takes a certain amount of power to work. Thus the a/c takes power from the engine to work. That power is not converted 100% to cooling power, you cannot get as much power out of something as you put into it. Theres drag from the bearings, you're turning a mechanical spin into a compressed gas, and so on.

Now the intercooler will not perfectly mate to the cold-side of the a/c system (the evaporator) so you have another imperfect exchange. It will never exchange at 100% efficiency.

You're trying to create perpetual motion, drawing power from a system to add more power to the system. You won't ever be able to put even the same amount of power back that you took out. You will always lose power when you change it or transfer it.

I brought this up a long long time ago and yes, the concensus was that the passages were too small.

lol, funny you should mention that that, cause he barely made it home, somebody hit him on the way back! Although the new oil cooler solved his problems...

But yeah he had a hell of a time getting over the grapevine or whatever they call it, he left like an hour before the rest of the pack when we stopped right before to eat, and we still passed him...

its a very creative idea, but it just doesn't work, and thats been proven to some extent, although i am curious to see how it would work if it were not blocking the radiator, because you have to keep in mind dans condenser was right in front of the radiator

dan atkins has a supercharged 13brew in his b2200 mazda truck and hes using the trucks stock ac condesonr or radiator whatever the hell its called, fo rhte oil cooler, he has had no problems with it.

:EDIT: i guess this was already posted, i reposted.. sorry

ur right. its called the "grapevine". last struggle to LA from central cali

The Ford Lighting uses a system like this or did once. It has and after type IC like the SVT Mustang but has the Refrigent from the AC run to the IC to help cool it. It is a one time type system. Meaning you hit the button when ready and cools the IC for a minuate or two. Said to be good for 5+ HP. Down side is it takes a while for the refrigent to get cold again. So you have to wait to use it again.

AHA! so it can work! what if you made a dedicated system using liquid nitrogen....sure it would be almost impossible to control and be unsafe or whatever, but your charge temp would be somehwere around -100 degrees...

Well, I can see using the A/C system for a hot weather car, especially someplace like in Sacramento where we can get some gnarly hot air coming off the pavement, or for racing applications. Yes, you lose a bit of power off of your engine, but you can do some additional cooling beyong an intercooler that might help... or you could run an evaporator / IC setup (somehow... fabricate? People are gonna kill me for this! :P) that would allow you to cycle refridgerant in it for the same charge idea... or how about running cold air from the cabin A/C system into the intercooler?

If things get too hot, you have fuel issues, although I'm pretty sure the Rotary doesn't care about it, being such a fun system. When you get too cold, especially with a carbuerator, Bad Things happen. Mostly with fuel fallout. Admittedly, you might be able to use the Turbo to have fast enough airflow so that your fuel falls out into your engine, buuut...

I need to toss my beehive. Its leaking again! Time to head to head towards the junk yards again... grumble.

Oh well It was worth a shot.. I may still try it one day on an old raggedy 12A.......