Project Elephant - Oil cooling

[Chuck Moreland]

I'm a bit slow getting updates to the web site. The oil cooler and lines are in the car and have been since early last week.



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High capacity cooling was mandatory. This car will spend lots of time on tracks in California. A good number of those tracks are in the middle of the desert and ambient temperature in excess of 100F is not uncommon mid-summer.

I've opted to go with a Widemouth fender mounted cooler, forgoing the center bumper mount. Although the bumper mount provides more cooling capacity, this car is running a 2.4 liter with plans to grow to 2.7 liters. The Widemouth in combination with finned oil lines and good ducting should be plenty.

The fender mount gives the added benefit of superior weight distribution and better protection for the cooler. Downforce should be a bit better too, since air exits into the wheel well instead of under the center of the car.

Had a larger motor (3.2, 3.6) been in the cards, the center mount would have gotten the nod.

The passenger headlight gets removed for track duty to force extra air through the cooler. The open headlight bucket makes a great scoop for gulping cool air. The bottom of the cooler will be boxed in to prevent air from escaping, but that hasn't been completed yet.