The 24 Hours of Lemons Forums → Lemons Tech → Junkyard oil cooler
I found a fabulous junkyard oil cooler off of a Volvo Turbo beasty. ($18.92! And on my second EVAR trip to a pick a part! So excellent!) It is filled with blacker than black, slightly sandpapery oil. I'm assuming I should flush that gunk out.
Any thoughts on how? Keep in mind we have no access to fancy stuff without paying for it, and we're lazy.
I found a fabulous junkyard oil cooler off of a Volvo Turbo beasty. ($18.92! And on my second EVAR trip to a pick a part! So excellent!) It is filled with blacker than black, slightly sandpapery oil. I'm assuming I should flush that gunk out.
Any thoughts on how? Keep in mind we have no access to fancy stuff without paying for it, and we're lazy.
We flushed ours with Lacquer thinner (Home Depot), we used a small hose and funnel and ran it through a couple of times. Once we flushed it we ran 10 PSI air through to evaporate the thinner. Lacquer is as thin as water and breaks down oil quickly so you want to make sure all of it is out or it will thin down your oil and also might make your car go boom if enough vapor builds in the engine.
Worked for us, good Luck.
flush with diesel fuel - much cheaper and when you're done you can put it in your tractor...
I use brake cleaner to clean everything
running some tranny fluid through it would work pretty well. you could always just attach it to the motor and put an inline filter on the return line. run it for about 20 minutes, yank, check, reattach. cycle it until the oil comes out looking okay.
that being said, the brake cleaner sounds like less work...
I use brake cleaner to clean everything
umm, everything? hahahaaa.
It is a little known fact that brake cleaner will cure most forms of STD's. Truly amazing stuff.
It is a little known fact that brake cleaner will cure most forms of STD's. Truly amazing stuff.
I'm pretty sure it's going through the FDA approval process now.....
I found a fabulous junkyard oil cooler off of a Volvo Turbo beasty. ($18.92! And on my second EVAR trip to a pick a part! So excellent!) It is filled with blacker than black, slightly sandpapery oil. I'm assuming I should flush that gunk out.
Any thoughts on how? Keep in mind we have no access to fancy stuff without paying for it, and we're lazy.
That is one oil cooler that I would find a trash can for!
Sorry I love cheap stuff stuff too.. (I really love it) However, an oil cooler is not where you can accept any old thing.. One that has had an engine desolve in it is one to walk away from! Please walk away! I know you spent $10.000 and time but just think of how expensive and time consuming it will be to replace your engine. You just Paid $10.00 from the school of hard knocks. Please don't spend much/much/more!
There are endless places where litttle bits of the old metal can hide from the flushing attempts.. However once it's exposed to the vibration heat and steady loading od braking/acceration and cornering that metal will decide to come out of hiding and try's it's level best to go find your bearings and desolve them too!
Just think of it as somebody pouring metal filings into your engine!
You want a great cheap oil cooler?
Cut out the aluminum A/C Radiator in the airconditioner section of the heater box. (not the one in front of the radiator) That puppy will take over 200PSI (go ahead and ask me how I know) plus it is wonderfully efficent. On top of that if you are clever you can use all the hose that goes to it and comes from it to provide for your plumbing..
A PT Cruiser has a really nice 24"W x 3"H aluminum transmission cooler.
Summit has some for like $30 if it doesn't work out.
Doctawife, you can use acetone/lacquer thinner and compressed air multiple times....you can also use a benzene-type solvent but you know about the carcinogenic properties of aromatics more than anyone! Half fill with solvent, invert and shake the hell out of the cooler. Repeat multiple times, then blow out with dry compressed air. You can get the gunk out, but it's a lot of work...AC evaporators are great, but they're a "series" setup and your oil cooler is probably a "parallel" type, which should be less restrictive. Probably not a factor unless your oil pressure is suspect. How are you gonna tap the system, oil filter adapter?
what do you need an oil cooler for??????????????????????????? The 203whp 928 and 197whp V8olvo don't run them.......
The 85 whp Tinyvette Opel will be running one. I think our came from a Volvo.
As for the possibility of metal bits in the oil cooler, put it upstream of the oil filter.
what do you need an oil cooler for? The 203whp 928 and 197whp V8olvo don't run them.......
Class, for this week's writing assignment compare and contrast the 197whp hoodless V8olvo and 203whp 928 estate with the Neon that once had 132 hp at the crank.
That's why we want to keep our feeble little neon engine as comfortable as possible while it toodles around Texas and Louisiana. It ain't gonna grow a fresh pair and start making an extra 100hp so we'll concentrate on the reliability front, and overheating this month at MSR-H was no fun.
Doctawife, you can use acetone/lacquer thinner and compressed air multiple times....you can also use a benzene-type solvent but you know about the carcinogenic properties of aromatics more than anyone! Half fill with solvent, invert and shake the hell out of the cooler. Repeat multiple times, then blow out with dry compressed air. You can get the gunk out, but it's a lot of work...AC evaporators are great, but they're a "series" setup and your oil cooler is probably a "parallel" type, which should be less restrictive. Probably not a factor unless your oil pressure is suspect. How are you gonna tap the system, oil filter adapter?
Yes to the last question.
Thanks to everyone for all of the suggestions. We'll probably use something carcinogenic. What could possibly go wrong?
I use brake cleaner to clean everything
+1
I used some today to exterminate some wasps that were looking to build a LeMony nest. Kills 'em dead.
RX-7s have very nice, large oil coolers with built-in thermostats. Rotaries also don't tend to shell out as nastily as other motors. Just keep an eye out for cracks in the inlets/outlets. People overtorque them and crack the fittings.
I think our Jaguar is a testament to what an oil cooler can do for you. Our XJ6 had a small stock oil cooler that kept the bearings from seizing up when our motor exceeded 270F. One way or another our next motor will have a larger RX-7 oil cooler.
We donated a Benz A/C condenser to the Dauphine effort at Houston. Those could work as hella oil coolers as they are gigantic and plumbed small so you could keep the oil pressure up pretty good.
Well if you get all technical....there is an "oil" cooler from a gen II Rx7 in the 928 estate...but it cools the automatic.....
RX-7s have very nice, large oil coolers with built-in thermostats. Rotaries also don't tend to shell out as nastily as other motors. Just keep an eye out for cracks in the inlets/outlets. People overtorque them and crack the fittings.
I think our Jaguar is a testament to what an oil cooler can do for you. Our XJ6 had a small stock oil cooler that kept the bearings from seizing up when our motor exceeded 270F. One way or another our next motor will have a larger RX-7 oil cooler.
Da Judge Phil is the one who has been giving oil cooler advice - his recs were something off of a Volvo turbo or an RX 7. If you Google RX 7 oil coolers, there's a guy who gives some pretty good advice on how to fix the inlet/outlet cracks. I just couldn't find any RX7s at the pick a part. I'm sure that if i looked harder, one could've been found.
running some tranny fluid through it would work pretty well. you could always just attach it to the motor and put an inline filter on the return line. run it for about 20 minutes, yank, check, reattach. cycle it until the oil comes out looking okay.
that being said, the brake cleaner sounds like less work...
Question - would an inline filter hold up to the pressure of the oil system? And if we're using a sandwich filter, would the oil cooler be before the regular oil filter anyway?
I could answer the latter question by, ya know, waiting for the damn thing to show up in the mail, but I'm impatient.
An oil cooler is a nice idea, but if your neon is overheating an oil cooler is not how to fix it. Last August at the Arse-sweat-a-palooza, we ran a single-cam neon with a stock cooling system, and it didn't overheat despite ambient temperatures above 95 degrees. How did we do it? Attention to detail. We ran the stock, original radiator (the A/C equipped unit, not the tiny non-A/C part) and stock single fan. We left the heater core and ventilation fan in the car in case the car ever got hot, but we never had to turn the vent fan on once. Yes, we ran the stock hood, bumper and headlights on the car.
What's the key detail? The air MUST go through the radiator. What non-stock part do you see in this picture?
Other than the 2.4L engine (added before last year's Arse-Freeze-a-palooza), you might notice that we removed the metal upper radiator mount brackets and replaced them with ordinary vinyl cove molding. That's the stuff that you see at the base of the wall in most commercial buildings. If you look around, you can probably find some leftover stuff for free. We also used the same cove molding to close out the sides of the radiator so that the air was forced to go through the radiator. This was important because remoiving the A/C condenser creates a big air leak in the system. We left the stock headlights in the car because they look interesting, and they fill the holes in the core support so that - you guessed it - air can't easily bypass through the headlight openings in the core support.
OK, now what non-stock part do you see in this picture?
My clever teammate Dave replaced the little plastic stock airdam with a bigger part made of brownish fiber lawn edging from the hardware store. It bolts on the lower edge of the core support just like the stock part, but it is quite a bit lower than stock. It might help with downforce on the front end and/or reduce drag, but I like it because it forces air to travel up to the radiator.
OIL: Good oil like Mobil 1 4T Racing 10w40 sportbike oil probably won't care about elevated oil temps. It didn't on our car, which ran well and consistently enough to finish 8th overall in the 95 degree+ heat last August at Buttonwillow.
We plan on finally blocking the headlight holes, and opening up the front to allow more air to the radiator. However, since we'll be running in a true 24, we're looking for any and all ways to make engines cool.
More air to the radiator? Yes. Less turbulence? Check. Decreasing engine oil temp? That too! At some point we're gonna look for a larger radiator as well.
Overkill and redundancy is good. Keeping original parts in case the redundancy bites us on the ass, also good. Either way, we're doing our damndest to run all 24 hours of the next NOLA race.
BTW we race with 5W50 synthetic.
Unless the system is designed to spray oil on the underside of the piston deck, there isn't much heat transfer through the oil.....cool it to keep the oil alive, but not as much to support the radiator...heat transfer is proportional to the temperature difference between the working fluid and ambient, so it maybe cooling efficiently at a higher stable temp than stock, but still working well. If you can't squeeze in a bigger rad, think about a large heater core, especially if you relocate it to get airflow...easy to plumb and surprisingly effective. Oh yeah, you're from Texas...the heater core is a little radiator under the dash that gets hot...it's controlled by a knob on the dash sometimes called a "defroster"....I know this is foreign technology down there.....the heater core is near another little radiator that gets cold for some reason I've never understood...
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