- 1,172
- 2
HackBoss302 said:From my experience I would say an oil temp gauge is a must. I track my car mainly in North Texas on tracks with a lot of hanging RPMs and the oil temps always exceeds 280 whenever the outside temps are above 90. So in the short term to lower oil temps I keep rpms below 6500 which in turn keeps oil temps below 265. Not the fastest way around the track, but much safer for the engine. IMO the FR / Setrab oil cooler should have been standard equipment.
Both great pieces of info, thanks.JScheier said:If it were me, and I wasn't planning on tracking the car, I'd probably be more concerned with oil temps in your scenario.
Since I do track the car, Oil temps are important, but lower oil pressure is more of a concern. If you were to go with a larger cooler (think someone mentioned 'Texas Sized') you'd definitely want to watch pressures to see if the larger cooler was resulting in a pressure drop. I think Kendall posted some interesting facts / numbers in his thread about pressure drop / loss across line and cooler sizes.
My current setup has oil temps coming out of the block at the oil pressure sensor location. In my previous car I ran the temp sensor after the cooler and then again at the filter. Filter (outbound with a sandwich plate) shows what exiting temperatures are. Exiting the cooler shows what you gained from the cooler and should be representative of what you are pumping back in. Based on my setup at the time, the filter location temps were more of a concern as that more readily represents the temperature of the oil at the bearings and other internals.
FWIW, I ran a fluidyne cooler on a 302 punched out to 347cu. Motor made 420 rwhp on pump gas and spun to 7800 rpm. Oil temps and pressures were very much on my mind each time I got on track.