What goes in the oil cooler?
 

I got my motor for free from somebody doing an LS1 swap (yuk) i managed to grab the oil cooler from his garage, but i think something is missing from it. if you take both banjo bolts off, and take the other large bolt off, i can see daylight looking through a machined hole in the oil cooler (the inlet plenum is directly connected to the outlet plenum). i think there must have been some sort of thermal pellet or something in there that bypasses the actual "heat exchanger" section of the cooler when the oil is already cold. if so, does anyone know where i could buy a replacement? the oil cooler seems to be in pretty good shape, so I'd rather not replace the entire thing if i don't have to.

Thanks,
Max

Its the thermostat, however I've never removed one so I'm not sure how simple it would be to recover from another cooler.

That cooler will work - it will just take longer to heat up your oil.

well as it is right now, i would say that the oil will always bypass the cooler, i would have to plug it with something for it to never bypass the cooler, which is what i might do. i'm just worried about whatever i plug it with from breaking loose and going somewhere i don't want it to be. i cant really get any welding rod in where its at. i guess i'll just put something in on the inlet side, so oil is always pushing my plug into place, instead of out of place...

What the hell? Don't rig up your oil system like that.

Just get a thermostat or another used cooler. They're a dime a dozen.

I laughed soooooo hard when I read the thread title.

But +1 to above - don't cheap out & jury rig the oil system

If it's just for racing then blocking off the bypass is fine, but if it's going to see street use, especially in low temps you'll need the termostat. If you're running AN lines you could add an external one, but I recall hearing that some people have run into reliability problems with some of the external thermostats.