heat from oil cooler?

[jeffery dalcour]

Has anybody tried to heat their car interior with an oilcooler?
If you have what were the results?
Jeff

[wwest]

Originally Posted by jeffery dalcour

Has anybody tried to heat their car interior with an oilcooler?
If you have what were the results?
Jeff

I'm pretty sure the oil flow to the front cooler is thermostatically controlled, so as not to cool the oil, engine, to much. That might mean to little heating available to the cabin without the same result, certainly so with the engine consistently operation low in the power curve.

[HawgRyder]

Small aircraft use this method...you might try looking up Cessnas or similar...and see what size of intercooler they use.
Once the cooler is charged with hot oil...I would think the amount of warm air would be substantial...as Wwest pointed out...the warm oil would not hit the cooler until the secondary oil valve opened up.
In some race cars there is no engine mounted cooler...so the warm oil goes to the front cooler almost immediately.
You might want to look into this too.
Luck.
Bob

[schumicat]

I doubt the oil cooler would give off more heat than the heat exchangers, as the exhaust is a lot hotter than the oil cooler. It could certainly be made to work if you put a heater core in the trunk/under dash through which hot oil circulated and cabin air was blown (just like a water cooled car). but that would be a huge amount of work. In your climate it could easily take a half hour or longer before the oil thermostat opened to the front cooler.

[TRE Cup]

Been there, tried it, it just does not give enough heat to be of any use. The air flow is minimal and temps are very low. We had a very nicely made shrouded box that captured all the air flow coming out of the cooler, too.

This has prompted our work on a new product, that we hope to launch in early 2012.

[ShakinJoe]

Originally Posted by TRE Cup

Been there, tried it, it just does not give enough heat to be of any use. The air flow is minimal and temps are very low. We had a very nicely made shrouded box that captured all the air flow coming out of the cooler, too.

This has prompted our work on a new product, that we hope to launch in early 2012.

Are you makin a bypass to a coil in the Evap housing using a three way valve turn on off the oil flow for cars with headers that want heat or defrost?

[captmarvin]

Originally Posted by HawgRyder

Small aircraft use this method...you might try looking up Cessnas or similar...and see what size of intercooler they use.
Once the cooler is charged with hot oil...I would think the amount of warm air would be substantial...as Wwest pointed out...the warm oil would not hit the cooler until the secondary oil valve opened up.
In some race cars there is no engine mounted cooler...so the warm oil goes to the front cooler almost immediately.
You might want to look into this too.
Luck.
Bob

Virtually all single engine light aircraft use a shroud around the muffler or exhaust
system for heat - similar to our air cooled 911s. Most light twins use a combustion heater that burns avgas.

[Bob Kontak]

Originally Posted by TRE Cup

This has prompted our work on a new product, that we hope to launch in early 2012.

Not even a hint - or have you given it to us?

[TRE Cup]

using oil is one way to do it via a heat exchanger. But that is complicated with tubes, valves, hot oil near electrical, etc.

Dennis Aase tried the oil cooler/ defrost heat approach with their 2.5 GTU Imsa racer back in the day. As a race car, there was a free hand in space and design. The extra oil cooler lived inside the trunk , where the fresh air fan would normally be located. By turning a valve inside the car, the driver could open up this extra cooler from bypass, to heat the air hitting the inside of the windshield. It worked okay on a race car where oil temps were regularly in the 180-220 degree range

The path we chose to take is in partnership with an electronics controls company. A dual fan/heater coil system will take residence in the footwells (where the auxillary fans live in 85 up carreras )
You will be able to dial in just a fan, or heating temps as you desire, with a dash mounted switch.

This will be perfect for people with headers, or wanting faster heat than warming up the current heater boxes can provide. Also if you bypass the standard hook ups to the heater boxes, you can eliminate the instant fogging of your windows when you drive thru deeper water.
The system is in beta testing now in a particularly wet and cold climate.
We hope to have results to report sometime in January, and if successful: anticipated delivery dates / pricing of complete product.

[ShakinJoe]

Dave,

Very clever. Perfect for foggy windshields on track cars with headers. Looking forward to seeing your set up.

[HawgRyder]

Captmarvin...used to working with Merlins...they use intercooling for several purposes.
Sorry bout that.
On the aircraft I flew...the heat was used on the guns, boosters for controls, and pre-heat for carburation, etc.
There were oil lines and Glycol lines running all over the place.
The only small unit I had any knowledge of was a home built Cavalier 5, it used intercoolers and partial shrouding to get heat into the cabin, the cooler was for defrost only because of the depth of the windscreen and height of the instrument panel.
I realize the differential of temperatures between exhaust and oil is vast, but for defrost, a small intercooler will work, and you can place it in the right spot with a short run for the air.
Valving will enhance the install (getting the hottest oil to the right place) or making sure that the hottest oil goes to the defrost first in a series type cooler install.
Bob