A question on oil-coolers from someone who does not do trackdays and thus speaks from a position bereft of practical experience.

Presupposing that the main cooling system is up to par, would a water-oil exchanger not be a practical alternative to a front-mount air-oil exchanger in situations where space is a consideration and the car is also driven on the street?

I would imagine that even the stock 1.8-style sandwich plate might provide some meaningful benefit if the water supply were re-plumbed such that it draws in relatively cool water from the front of the head, rather than taking the hottest water in the system from the rear of the head.

 

Coming from no actual experience with such a system here, but hypothetically speaking, I wouldn't expect that to help much.
Granted, CLT while cruising could be 175*, but when you're really using the car, which is when you would actually need the oil cooled, you're probably looking at more like 200*-210* CLT, given a really good cooling system... An air to oil exchanger, on a worst-case-scenario day of like 110* is going to have a incredibly higher delta between the two temps than you can get with a water to oil exchanger... Plus, then you're raising your water temps because that's what is soaking up that heat - suppose a non-oil cooled setup would run 210* Coolant and 250* Oil, then you're basically looking at 230* across the board with a water to oil exchanger, and you don't really want to be that high in the CLT department..

-Ryan

 

I have considered this for years, actually. The coolant absorbing the heat will be much hotter, true, but the oil-to-water exchange itself will be much more efficient than the oil-to-air. And the oil will stay away from rocks and debris, and won't take frontal airflow real estate. And an oil thermostat won't be needed, since once the coolant thermostat opens up the oil should warm up almost immediately. It lags 55-60F behind coolant during a cold-start warmup anyway, another 90 seconds won't hurt anything. "Too much oil cooler" off-track for street cars in winter would be a non-issue.

The place to do it would be with the return hose on a coolant re-route with a laminova heat exchanger. The heat is then dumped directly into the radiator, which you then size/duct etc appropriately to dissipate the total heat load.
http://www.batinc.net/files/laminova.pdf

I have an M-tuned reroute in my workbench. Since I have a 2001, though, I'll need to replace the head gasket when I put it on for things to flow as expected (since the 2001 and up head gaskets have a slightly different hole pattern to force more coolant flow around the rear cylinders). Thanks to Joe for his part in the detective work tracking that down, since that probably saved me from doing myself in trying to do the right thing.


The extra effort of the head gasket coupled with not really needing it yet has led me to inaction. Also the laminova coolers are not inexpensive, discouraging the "get one just in case" type purchases.

A bracket of some type would need to be fashioned, mounting either to where the intake mani brace mounts (that we all take off) or to the shock tower possibly. The hoses would support it most likely but I wouldn't want it banging around under race conditions.

It may still become part of my winter project.

 

I just can't get behind the idea of dumping additional heat into a cooling system that is already being pretty heavily taxed - and that assumes you can get enough heat out of the oil in the first place, which I doubt.

I am a firm believer in big, air-cooled oil coolers.

 

<--- Had a big combined radiator/oil cooler. Was not nearly as effective at regulating coolant or oil temperature as a separate big radiator + separate big oil cooler. I had more problems with coolant heat than oil heat, and when I switched them (and no other parts) all of my heat problems went away. That was on a NA Honda, which most likely does not generate as much engine heat as a turbo Miata.

I think the root issue there is maximum heat capacity of the system, and that you can exceed that on track.

 

I didn't read the complete thread, but here's what I know:

Having worked at TDR in the past and having installed many intercooler kits, I can mostly tell you what works.

There are many TDR customers tracking their stacked heat exchanger setup reliably with a 37mm PWR/Koyo radiator setup in 100*+ heat. You'll see even better results if you seal the TDR plastic ducting.

An oil cooler is absolutely necessary! The solution that we had came up with, and I still use, is mounting the oil cooler off of the steering rack so that it is parallel to the ground. I made sure that it is above the steering rack and not the lowest point on the car. We then cut a duct out of the factory bellypan and used L-brackets to keep the shape of the duct in tact. One thing I learned, though, is don't use a Tru-cool style oil cooler. It was extremely inefficient compared to the Setrab, Earl's and Mocal coolers.

The problems that I can see with running the TSE radiator on the TDR intercooler setup is the fact that the TDR intercooler uses modified radiator brackets to lower and move the radiator back. When running stock fans on a 37mm radiator, sometimes it is necessary to trim the shroud to clear the sway bar. It's absolutely necessary to trim them running the RB sway bar brace.

With the TSE radiator being so thick, I don't know if it's possible to make it all fit with the sway bar and front core support limitations. Someone test it and report back.

Andrew knows his ****. The biggest factors boil down to how hard you drive, how much boost you run and ambient temps.

Here is the installation guides for the TDR intercoolers for reference: http://trackdogracing.com/inst/