oil cooler location

[don gilbert]

as much as ive read about oil coolers here, i have yet to see anybody mount one in the rear spoiler/tail. is it do-able? my 3.0 sc in my 75 has no external cooler, and it hasent worried me because it has yet to get hot. it actually take about 10 mile of 65 mph to get to 180 on a 90 degree day, and it stays there. is that normal, or is my gauge not reading correctly? my brother jeff gave me a nice mocal cooler and i would like do do something with it. can it be put in the tail?

[Flieger]

I have seen oil coolers in the tail but it requires some custom fitting. I dont know if it fits with CIS stuff in there too. You need an auxilary thermostat as well.

Do you track your car? 10 miles of 65 mph is not pushing it much. I dont see over 185 F on 95 degree days charging up canyons and not getting much air flow through my front mounted cooler.

[DUK]

Putting it in the tail would introduce more heat into the top of the engine compartment. Also into the intake. I would think that alone would be bad.

I would check your t-stat, sounds like it might not be opening up soon enough.

[Tyson Schmidt]

You need to check to see if the gauge is accurate. There were early and late senders, but I don't remember the cut-off. The safe bet is to remove the sender from your old engine and install it in the 3.0.

If you use the late sender with an early gauge, it will read about 30-40 degrees cooler than it actually is.

The late senders are silver, and the early ones are bronze in color. My guess is your 75 gauge should use the early sender.

A 3.0 should definitely need an external cooler.

The problem with mounting the cooler in the spoiler is that once you mount the thermostat, it then needs to be plumbed back into the engine bay, and onto the decklid. Not real graceful. Plus you're pre-heating the air to the engine.

It would be cheaper and easier to use factory parts and mount at least a trombone cooler for now in the factory location in the RF fender.

[don gilbert]

i considered the extra heat it would transfer back into the engine compartment, but does'nt a car with ac tranfer extra heat with the condenor mounted there?

[don gilbert]

didnt consider senders being different tyson, im going out rite now to swap them.

[don gilbert]

ok, about the pre heated air going back into the intake, why cant you make an intake duct off the snorkle that grabs cool air from another location, possibly a ram-air type system, or would that make the cis go crazy? just thoughts

[don gilbert]

tyson, unfortunatly you were rite. i put in the sensor from the 2.7 and temp climbed to 180, then to 190, 200, and 210 and seemed to hold there. and that was driveing down the hwy about 20 miles at 60-70. now im worried that the car will get hot sitting in traffic on a hot day like today, it about 94 here rite now. how hot is hot, and how hot is to hot?

[Jack Olsen]

250 is too hot. 230 is where you start to keep a concerned eye on the gauge.

I've never understood the idea of putting an oil cooler right upstream of the air-cooling blower. I would think that the amount of heat released by an AC condenser is a fraction of what an oil cooler scrubs off -- but that's just a guess. My bigger concern would be that you're introducing moving components into the loop because of the engine lid going up and down. The factory solution gives you lots of cooling from the fixed lines and a final location for the cooler that's fixed and stable.

[Chuck Moreland]

All the above, plus you are adding weight at the rear of the car and up high - not good.

[JayG]

Well not sure if its doable for some of you guys because of the mufflers but I have my coolers down low in the back with the rotary swap. Pic just for reference. Lots of air flow down there.

[SteveM911]

Not sure how well oil coolers in the rear lid, but I have seen it done a few times.

Here's a picture of one I came across recently.