I've been messing around with the idea of getting some off-the-shelf earl's oil coolers and hose and installing dual oil coolers in side ducts on my S5 front end. (currently occupied by nonfunctional stock fog lights) This would give two benefits: 1: getting a hot thing out of the way of my radiator, 2: increased oil cooling capacity.

I was wondering is anyone else had done this already so I don't have to reinvent the wheel. I noticed that the wiper fluid bottle is on the passenger side in that area, sort of in the way of where I'd want the cooler. I'd prefer to keep my wiper bottle :p I do have the low-capacity rear wiper bottle sitting around unused, I might be able to use it instead.

 

I think Santiago was talking about doing something similar a few months back and nearly everyone told him it wouldn't work. Although, i think his design was to have it to the direct left and right of the radiator.

I'm not certain if what you're wanting to do would be better or not, however it would make more room for a larger IC, and that's always good.

 

It will however drop your oil pressure...

 

Oil pressure isn't an issue, I've got a high pressure oil regulator in my shiny new rebuild. One thing I wanted to experiment with was rigging the coolers in parallel vs rigging them in series. This would require an experiment, my gut tells me that parallel would be superior, with reduced pressure drop and better cooling, (for the same reason that a wide intercooler is better than a long intercooler of the same dimensions) but only a proper experiment would give me the answer.

 

And if you do this you need to take lots of pictures of your work just incase it does work!

 

Of course.

 

Cooling is one of those things that has a lot of aspects and is difficult to plan. Some variables include vehicle speed, ducting, fluid pressure, cooler efficiency, engine cooling requirements, etc. As much as I like theory, I think this is one of those things that you really need to try out yourself.

A friend of mine mounted dual Mocal oil coolers in the front end of his FD, similar to your described method. He ran over a curb at Daytona and ripped one open, which ultimately resulted in a blown engine. While your car may not be as low to the ground, and you may be better at watching your gauges, this is still something to keep in mind.

Just make sure that you have some type of thermostat, as over-cooled oil will increase engine wear, reduce horsepower, and promote sludge build-up. For reference, the stock oil cooler and eccentric shaft bypass valves operate at about 60-65 deg C. The general rule of thumb is to try and keep the oil in the 95-110 deg C range for best performance.

 

We're designing such a system on our 20B track car.
We're using a pair of Long 11" x 11" oil coolers from Racer Wholesale.
These things were relatively cheap - about $70 each.

I don't think the stock bumper has enough airflow to cool these things.
We had to resort to a custom front bumper to get a hol big enough in the front bumper to cool these oil coolers.


-Ted

 

Where did you find those coolers at racer wholesale? I can't find them. The cheapest I found so far is 148 each for some by fluidyne 10x11 inch with -12AN male fittings at summit. Below is the product of my research so far, assuming that I can re-use my existing -12AN 90 degree fittings from the RB oil cooler line set currently installed in the car. The 20 feet of hose is a guess. The fittings are killer, price-wise. Doing the serial setup saves a bunch of money since there's fewer parts involved.


Parallel design
Req Item P/N Vendor Price Each Ext. Price
2 Fluidyne fluid Cooler 10x11, -12 AN FLD-DB-30125-12 Summit 148.99 297.98
1 Thermostat -12 AN 1226-12an Pegasus 93.69 93.69
2 T fitting -12AN 3228-12 Pegasus 27.49 54.98
4 90deg hose end -12AN 3271-12-090 Pegasus 23.99 95.96
10 Straight hose end -12AN 3271-12-000 Pegasus 11.99 119.9
20 SS Braid hose -12AN per foot 3270-12 Pegasus 8.99 179.8

total 842.31


Serial Design
Req Item P/N Vendor Price Each Ext. Price
2 Fluidyne fluid Cooler 10x11, -12 AN FLD-DB-30125-12 Summit 148.99 297.98
1 Thermostat -12 AN 1226-12an Pegasus 93.69 93.69
4 90deg hose end -12AN 3271-12-090 Pegasus 23.99 95.96
4 Straight hose end -12AN 3271-12-000 Pegasus 11.99 47.96
20 SS Braid hose -12AN per foot 3270-12 Pegasus 8.99 179.8

total 715.39

As for the bumper, for our purposes, the general rule is that the duct should be 1/4 the size of the heat exchanger or so, right? I'm not averse to doing a little chopping on the bumper, either.

Edit: Hmm, in Tune To Win, Carroll Smith advocates installing multiple coolers in parallel.

 

That's the first thing I thought of. The second was letting the air out again. There has to be an outlet path just as big (preferably bigger) as the intake to ensure enough airflow. Just another thing you need to think carefully about if you want this to work.

 

Hmmmm...I can't seem to find them on their website.
You might want to call them up?

Otherwise, you can check out these links...
http://www.bakerprecision.com/setrab.htm
Setrab, yum, but very expensive.
If I had the money, I would get Setrabs.

I would've went with these though...
http://www.pegasusautoracing.com/Pro...p?Product=1210
These are slightly cheaper.

The owner of the 20B FC works with HVAC stuff, so he's going with "refrigeration" hoses and fittings.
We've used them for our current dual stock parallel oil coolers with much success.


Well, this works if you duct it properly.
Most people don't go through all the trouble and hassle of proper ducting.


-Ted

 

The Setrab look nearly identical to the Pegasus ones, and the ones that Earl's sells. Baker does have some Long intercoolers, are these the ones you meant? http://www.bakerprecision.com/trucool.htm One place says that you can't use the tabs on the Earl's coolers to mount them, that they'll crack. Why do they put the tabs on then?

The long coolers use NPT... blech.

Yeah. I plan to do it though, otherwise what's the point?

I figure the air can be let back out into the wheel well, or slightly forward of the wheel well.

Are hoses and fittings rated for low temperature (fridge) going to fare well under the hood of a 20B engined car? It gets hot in there...