Auxiliary cooling

A Fiat Brava....dude, how'd I miss that?! Sweet!

A lot of teams swear by adding an oil cooler, and I don't have any experience with that so I can't really comment. I will say, however, that 99.9% of the cooling problems that happen in a Lemons race are because the radiator is inadequate.

In our crappy Alfa Spider, we have a Honda radiator mounted on the trunk with no fan. As long as the car is moving, the thing stays ice cold. Previously, we had a re-cored stock Alfa unit with a fan and we were always running hot. Moral: Use Honda parts on your Italian car wherever possible, especially when it comes to the cooling system. If there's any way for you to fit a cheap radiator from a more modern car in your Brava, do that instead of messing around with an oil cooler.

You'll find pretty good oil coolers in Mazda RX-7s and turbocharged Volvos at the junkyard as well. The Volvo coolers have nice long hoses, too.

Also, you might consider going with a much-bigger-than-stock radiator. Just start a-hackin' at sheet metal until there's room! I'm a big fan of the Benz W126 radiator.

At Reno we of Team Pontihack owned aux cooling with our wart-like roof mounted rad....seriously, unless you're air cooled like a Corvair, oil cooling is not as effective as water cooling.....but if you have the oil cooler, put it in....unless your mill is somehow turbo'd or supercharged, adding more water cooling is the way to go...even a large heater core can reject a surprising amount of heat in the airstream....in all my race engines going back 30 years, I always gutted the thermostat core (leaving the outer ring) to prevent ugly stuck 'stat, blown head gasket issues...

Jim "Endo" Anderton
Fiero #15 @ Reno-Fernley

Water cooling and oil cooling are both highly important, but are not directly related. You won't see much impact on your temperature gauge if you put a better oil cooler in. You probably will see an impact on your bearings (or, more acctuarely, you WON'T see impact on your bearings).

We got a Volvo 240 Turbo oil cooler on half price day for $8 ($7 + $1 core charge). The long oil lines were an additional $4 each, and the oil filter mount sandwich plate that Volvos use to feed their oil cooler was FREE (cashier didn't notice it on the end of the lines, cha-ching!)

2nd gen RX-7 coolers are bigger/better, but Volvo gives you the whole solution with lines and a sandwich plate. The Volvo cooler is a really high-quality Mocal part.

-Dave