Oil temp woes

[daniel911T]

My oil is always cold. Always.

I'm running a 1970 2.2T motor with E cams, Zeniths, and a 006 (E) distributor. It runs amazing. Starts with no fuss on even the coldest (or hottest) days, pulls smoothly and extremely hard until the rev limiter shuts off the fun at 7K, and sees duty as a daily driver. It's as well behaved in traffic, around town, or on the highway as any modern car.

For as long as I've owned it there have been issues with oil temp. It only has the engine mounted oil cooler with a stock aluminum 11 blade fan from a '69 and a 69T shroud without the additional duct for getting more air to the oil cooler. It has a somewhat abnormal oil thermostat, it's actually adjustable, but I've never been able to get a response to changes. The temp sender has been replaced twice and is definitely telling the truth... I've tested it with water at known temperatures and it's been dead on.

It's very cold in the beautiful Northwest at the moment, so running an old car in 20-something degree air isn't expected to get too hot, but even after hours of driving I can't even get the needle to 120F (the lowest mark). In the dead of summer with a hot day and abusive driving I can achieve 180F, but I can't keep that temp.

The oil is getting milky because of water intrusion due to condensation and it never getting hot enough to vaporize the water.

My timing is right on spec for an E, 30BTDC at 6K - I'm running an MSD 6AL with a Blaster 2 coil and Bosch Super's (W5DC+) and a gap of about .045. The carbs have stock size air jets, main jets, and vents, but I have slightly oversized idle jets and - 52.5 vice 47.5 stock and slightly undersized idle air correction jets 130 vice 140. (both recommended by Paul Abbott as a counter to modern gasoline formulations.) Any attempt to go leaner results in a significant loss of driveability and backfiring.

Any idea what I can do to warm my cold baby's heart?

Thanks in advance!
-Dan

[drtyler]

I would start with the thermostat.

You don't mention if it functions properly?

Definitely need to figure it out. That milky oil isn't good for the engine all the time.

[daniel911T]

Originally Posted by drtyler

I would start with the thermostat.

You don't mention if it functions properly?

Definitely need to figure it out. That milky oil isn't good for the engine all the time.

I've been through three of them.... sadly, about the only thing I can say for sure is that they're fully closed at room temp and fully open at 212F. (Verified with boiling water.)

It has a setscrew and locknut on top... I asked the Pelican community about it once and nobody had even heard of anything like it. I'm pretty sure the setscrew adjusts preload on the plunger, but at the moment I just have it set to midrange. I've tried moving it to both extremes and driving it hard... I still couldn't get the oil to warm up enough.

I guess given a choice between having uncontrollably cold or hot oil - the cold side is safer. Still, I really want to boil out that water....

[fanaudical]

Do you have a pic of the thermostat? Something still doesn't seem quite right...

[daniel911T]

Originally Posted by fanaudical

Do you have a pic of the thermostat? Something still doesn't seem quite right...

I'm going in this afternoon to install a set of SSIs. I'll pull the thermostat out and take some pictures while I'm at it.

Anybody know any tests I can run on the thermostat to verify that it's doing the right thing?

Thanks!

-Dan

[Chuck.H]

A very simple test is to start the engine cold and feel (or use an infrared thermometer on) the oil lines before and after the thermostat. They of course should get warm on one side and stay cool on the other side until the warm side gets hot.

Chuck.H
'89 TurboLookTarga, 369k miles

[T77911S]

he only has the engine mounted oil cooler

[daniel911T]

He may be on to something. I don't have the lines going to the front, but I do have the lines that go from tank to engine and back.... I'll check it.

[pors1968]

It might be only the dash temp .Did you check if it the right year for your car.

[T77911S]

if you remove the wire from the temp sender, does the needle max out?
ignition on of course

[daniel911T]

I'm going to close this out...

I had the exhaust off today - the thick black soot down there makes the problem apparent. I'm RICH... REALLY RICH. At least the deposits were dry - no evidence of oil intrusion.

I've only really tweaked with the idle fuel and idle air corrector jets, but it's clear that I'm going to have to take a real look at the main jetting and of course confirm float levels. I'll open a new thread on carb tuning when I'm reunited with my jet kit. Right now I'm thinking about those air jets (the ones on top of the emulsion tube chamber)... a bit more air there may help a lot.

Just to double check, I'll try pulling the sender when it's running again. However, I'm pretty sure it's telling the truth - I warmed it up until it was idling smoothly at the right RPM and drove it a bit, pulled it into the garage and drained the oil - it was lukewarm at most, even in the crankcase. (Please keep in mind that the Outside Air Temp (OAT) was less than 20F.)

I wish sometimes that this was a bit more airplane like... I really want an EGT gauge and single knob to lean the mixture!

(Or a flight engineer to take care of that for me!)

Thanks for the help! We'll get the fuel sorted and see how the oil temps look then.

-Dan