Today I installed my oil cooler from z1 motorsports. I went with their 34 row cooler and thermostatic plate kit. Here is what the kit looks like:
You get the Setrab core, Mocal sandwich plate, two brackets for the core, two braided hoses with an 10 fittings, and the two bolts for the cooler bracket.
The lower bracket mounted to the core:
And the upper bracket:
Bumper removed, car jacked up, and ready to go. Note that I didn't need to remove the impact bar.
The core is pretty tall and heavy, so the lower bolts alone do not support it enough. That's the reason for the upper bracket. For this bracket, you have to drill a hole in the metal upright. It's thin and easy to drill. Just make sure you have sponge or wood behind it to prevent the drill from going through into the ac condenser and radiator
Lined up:
This is a good time to fill the core with oil and then screw the fittings onto it. The 34 row core is pretty big and took almost a whole litre of oil.
Lower bracket bolted:
and upper bracket:
There is no nice, easy clean way for the hoses to go around the radiator to the engine. The easiest way is to drill holes in the thin plastic panels on the passenger side right beside the power steering cooler, and then route the hoses through the holes. A drill with a hole saw does the trick
Routing the hoses:
I zip tied the hoses to the impact bar, and wherever there was a chance of friction or rubbing i covered the hoses with this heat resistant plastic covering that's commonly wrapped around electrical wiring in the engine bay to protect it
More routing of the hoses:
Note that the left hose was much easier to route behind the vertical metal brace. The front of that brace curves forward and is too thick. I tried routing the hose in front of it but it was bent at an awkward angle. The hoses are not the same length. One is much longer than the other. In fact, it's so long that even after fitting it to the far end of the cooler core, there is still a lot of slack in the hose and it is dangling right behind the power steering cooler. Also note that for whatever weird reason, one of the fittings on the shorter hose is bent much sharper than a right angle. It is the one attached to the left side of the core in the above pic. It was practically impossible to attach this terminal to the sandwich plate since the sharp bend caused clearance issues with the sway bar and the oil temp and pressure sensors. I ended up removing the hose and flipping it around so that the sharply bent terminal fit onto the cooler core instead. I have no idea if this terminal was bent like this for a reason or if it was a manufacturing glitch. It just doesn't seem to serve any purpose and just caused a headache for me.
Here are the hoses fit to the sandwich plate
you will notice the over/under set up i used. one hose went over the sway bar and over another hose which i'm not sure but i believe is an AC line. the other hose went under the sway bar. ideally i would have loved to fit both hoses above the sway bar, but there just isn't enough room. the sway bar, alternator, and oil temp and pressure sensors gobble up all of the space there. it was hard enough to get one hose there. the second hose just had no room whatsoever. routing both hoses under the sway bar was not an option either. the hoses and their an fittings are thick and big enough to prevent the plastic undertray from bolting back on. it took me over an hour of trial and error and test fitting to figure out this layout that i used as this was the layout that had the least interference with surrounding structures. however, i do wonder if the hose under the sway bar might experience tension or pressure due to the swaybar movement.
Finally, i started the engine and warmed it up, checked for leaks, and topped off the oil. The large core and large hoses gobbled up a lot of oil. I actually had to add a whole 1.5 litres of oil to make up for it.
From the outside:
total time taken: 4.5 hours
Final thoughts:
The cooler seems to be working good. I drove on the street for half an hour very hard and aggressive on the engine, staying in low gear, full throttle pulls, redlining it, and the temp did not get higher than 100 degrees C. i would say that the cooler kit gave at least 10 to 20 degrees drop in temp on the street. i look forward to trying it on the track and see if it can prevent the dreaded limp mode.
I'm somewhat worried about the hose under the sway bar. Is there a risk of the sway bar flexing and ripping out the hose?
After adding the cooler the engine bay now has that characteristic whoosh sound on revving the engine, the same sound most people with oil coolers seem to experience. No biggie I guess.
The kit seems to be decent quality and workmanship. However, a couple of issues annoyed me. The hoses were thick and inflexible, so routing them through tight space was a chore. Also, can someone from Z1 explain to me why in the hell that fitting on the shorter hose had such a sharp bend to it? And why was one hose so much longer than the other one?
Speaking of which, the instruction manual that came with the kit was absolutely worthless. It lacked detail, skipped several steps, was very lacking in terms of pictures (nor did it make up for that with thousands of words either), and even worse, the manual had the wrong information on assembling the setrab core! The core in the manual had an upper bracket that was identical to the lower bracket. The large wide bracket that is as wide as the core. The upper bracket in my kit was much much smaller and completely different design. Z1, UPDATE YOUR INSTRUCTION MANUAL!!!!!
Soooo, 800 bucks, 4.5 hours, and several scratches and bruises later, I finally have my oil cooler installed!
Thanks for nothing Nissan
