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@Stan Galat posted:....I think of the shroud and fan as a head cooling setup with a cute little oil cooler as a secondary oil cooler. I think of the remote cooler as the primary oil cooler.
If you're oil is running hot sitting in stop-and-go traffic, that seems to me to indicate that the remote oil cooler setup is inadequate.
Thoughts?
Stan, my cooling system is master of its domain. I don't have any overheating issues. When I say 'running warm', I mean a little towards the high side of its usual range (the oil temp needle drifts a little north of its usual, centered place on the gauge).
I've got a stock cooler in the doghouse besides a Setrab in the wheel well. I control the oil cooler fan manually. I did this initially just for simplicity (one less thing to fail), but I've found it gives me a little better info about what stresses the engine as I drive. I can also know for certain if the fan is working or not. With a thermostatic switch you never know for sure if the fan is coming on when it should, if the switch has failed, if the fan has failed, or if one of them is working intermittently. (I'm not overthinking this, am I?)
The normal drill is to drive until the needle approaches half and then I switch the fan on. Some days, I never need the fan. In warmer weather, I just leave the fan on once it's on. On some days, it's just cool enough that I'll have to switch the fan off after it's been on a while.
What I do notice, with the fan on or off, is that climbing a long hill in a lower gear, with the revs at, say, 4000, the oil temp does noticeably drop. So, the engine fan may be cooling mainly the heads, but that in turn is cooling the oil, too. Or, maybe the cute little cooler in the shroud is doing some real work as well. At any rate, with a thermostatically controlled fan, I would just assume that that had kicked on while climbing the hill. This is another small example of how watching the gauge and switching the fan manually gives you a little more info about what's going on.
And besides, I just like playing with toggle switches.
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