Oil Cooler Sanwich plate noise

[The Arp]

I've got a stillen oil cooler kit installed the, one with the sandwich plate that has the spring loaded ball check bypass valve in it. Oil temperatures are significantly reduced and the only downsides are that on short drives my oils sometimes doesn't warm up much and I can still get the oil pretty hot if I work the car over in the canyons for any length of time.

Also, If you get the stillen kit check to make sure the fittings that come preinstalled on the lines are tight. I noticed two of mine leaked after I completed the install (I should have checked the lines before the install).

So, when I start my car and the oil is cold I noticed a loud rattling noise coming from the engine compartment. Sounds like a ball bearing rattling around viciously.

I get my hands on a ghetto stethoscope (a bicycle handle bar) and start searching around and it became clear that the noise can be heard clearly from the oil filter and sandwich plate. The noise quiets down as the car warms up to the point where you you can't hear it standing next to the car but I can still hear it clearly with the stethoscope.

So I think it is oil going past the ball bearing bypass valve causing it to rattle. This raises two concerns:

1. It really makes a lot of noise cold. If it's constantly slamming against the aluminum in the sandwich plate is it possible for some bits of the material to fatigue and eventually be liberated from the sandwich plate and into my oil filter. Or have spring fatigue and do the same.

2. Its still making noise when hot, which means oil is still bypassing the oil cooler. So my cooler (even with hot oil) is still a significant enough of a restriction that oil chooses to bypass it. Wouldn't be better to get a thermostatic plate and a cooler with bigger lines fitting. It seems to me that I'm not getting the most of my existing core as oil is still bypassing it.


Will some larger lines thermostatic plate fix my issues? I don't want to spend the money on a larger core but it would be nice to get better cooling out of my existing one?

Anyone else with the stillen oil cooler kit getting this noise or is it just me?