Oil temp???

[DF]

I have a 2056fi with about 2k on it (comp reb). Among other nagging problems like idle, I am concerned about the oil temp. During the summer I saw 260 a couple of times and even with the cooler temps in northern cal right now I still saw 220 the other day tooling about town for an hour or so. Is this too high?
Thanks in advance DF

[Dave at Pelican Parts]

260, depending who you ask, is fine--or it's too hot.

220 is in the "normal operating range". You want your oil to get up to at least 200 to get contaminants (mostly water) out. 212F is an even better temperature (again, the water) and 220F is just fine and dandy.

Bruce Anderson's rule of thumb for 911s is that 230F is the upper end of "normal", 240F is "hot", and 250F is "too damn hot".

Some 914 folks disagree.

--DD

[campbellcj]

As Dave mentioned, 220F is not a problem.

I'd be worried about the 260 in street driving though. My stock 2.0 got that high within moments in track driving before I added an external cooler, but I don't think I ever saw those temps on the street. Now with the cooler it never goes over 230 on the street, even under high loads, such as 80mph over the Grapevine. It will still try to shoot up to 250-270 at the track, at least when it's really hot out (95+ ambient), but it takes much longer to get that hot than it did before, and it "settles down" instead of just continuing to get hotter and hotter like it did before. I usually back-off or pull into the pits if it approaches 260-270. That's too hot for comfort.

Adding a cooler might be the way to go. You first may want to check the usual things that can lead to hot running, i.e. timing advanced too far, oil cooler blocked by crud/leaves etc, engine crud in general, & proper operation of cooling flaps.

It might also be advisable to switch to synthetic oil...I'm running Mobil 1 15-50W now. At least then if it does go over 250, your oil won't break down.