Brakes: Yes, the leak appears to be gone. I've done about a hundred miles of driving or so now on the new brake setup, starting to trust them again now. With all of the brake line work that happened (especially replacing that right front hard line), one bleed/flush wasn't enough though. It's going to be one of those things where you bleed as good as you can, drive it and use the brakes a bunch to knock the air bubbles around, bleed again a day or two later, etc. Right now I can tell there's still air in the system but it's getting better, the pedal feel is basically back close to stock now. Will order more Motul and bleed again next week.
Oil cooler: The oil cooling from the Stillen cooler kit + the AAM spacer is really pretty phenomenal. Oil temps now change very slowly. Cruising on the highway in 7th gear (regardless of wheel speed, because the revs from more speed are offset by the increased airflow) brings the oil to about 190-195 and stays there, even if you started out higher from aggressive small street stuff.
I still haven't managed to break 220 yet at all, and I've done some reasonably aggressive sprinting and cornering stuff now. I bet I could get it to perhaps 235 if I tried pretty hard, but I don't generally sustain aggressive driving on the street long enough to go any higher I don't think. Maybe at a track in the future we'll see how it does under really sustained hard driving.
My only complaint now is the warm-up time. My routine now for my first drive of the day is basically to start the car, get back out and have a cigarette, maybe clean up some things around the garage, etc. It takes about 12 minutes sitting there if I wait until the oil temp gauge bumps up to 150. I usually don't wait quite that long. But either way I wait until 160 to start getting on it a little, and 180 before any WOT and/or high rpm driving. On a short trip it may not even get there. I'll be swapping out the sandwich plate for a thermostatic one at my next oil change to help remedy this.
|