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Old 10-18-2011, 10:34 PM   #136 (permalink)
Pharmacist
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Join Date: May 2009
Location: Toronto, Ontario
Posts: 1,249
Drives: 09 370z Sport 6MT
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Red__Zed View Post
pretty much this. you basically are gonna stop cooling your engine when the oil temps get that high.

serious limp mode doesn't kick in currently til 300. that could be catastrophic.
Not following your logic. The oil isn't generating heat by itself. It's getting heated by the engine. So if you cool the oil, you are helping to cool the engine. Also lets assume the oil reaches 280 fahrenheit (no idea what that is. I'm part of the 95% of the human population that uses metric units). That means the engine is already at 280 or even higher. So the coolant will already have to deal with that, regardless of whether or not it's also dealing with the oil.

Besides, given the huge difference in specific heat capacity between oil and water, and the fact that the volumes of both oil and coolant interacting in the cooler are so small, it's unlikely that there will be any huge change in coolant temperature.

What I'm really concerned about is whether that system will even be adequate at all to cool the oil. 99.99% of the problems with limp mode are due to sustained and aggressive track driving. Will that small and cheap cooler really be enough to prevent that from happening? If it doesn't then people will be hitting limp mode again and it will be the same complaints over and over again, and the same magazine articles bashing the Z again and again. Sure, the Z might last until lap 4 or 5 before shutting down, instead of lap 2 or 3, but still it's more of the same.
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