Laminova Oil-Water heat exchanger
 

Has anyone installed one of these Mocal Laminova oil to water heat exchanger oil cooler units on their 370Z?

http://97.74.103.94/files/laminova.pdf

They come in 3 sizes a 90mm, which is equivalent to a 10-13 row Setrab 225 matrix cooler, a 180mm which is equal to a 16-19 row Setrab and a 330mm which equals a 25-30 row Setrab.

Oil-water heat exchanges are very efficient, my GT3 has oil-water heat exchanger and my 350 Z has one as well, but this was deleted for the 370 Z and I suspect why the 370 has issues with oil temps.

The Laminova unit would be easy to install in a radiator hose with an oil bypass plate under the oil filter and running oil lines to the Laminova. No thermostat required and the oil is both warmed and cooled by the unit.

The Australian and Middle-East spec cars get a smaller version of an oil to water cooler mounted to the oil filter fitting. They do work, they are effecient but have to be properly sized and the water cooling system may need upgrades to compensate for the extra heat load. The cheapest effective solution is still an air to oil cooler.

I was actually thinking about installing one, however since I already have an oil cooler we would most likely be installing one with an in-line thermostat using the existing Setrab cooler as a secondary.

Definitely wouldn't hurt to have both. Even with the giant oil cooler I have I have hit 270F on track, water temp never went above 210F.

Bringing this thread back from the dead because I've been looking into the possibility of a Laminova lately.

Here's some links. Link in OP is not working for me
Laminova Catalog PDF
Cheapest online store I found for 43mmx330mm version

I like this idea compared to air based coolers since it:
- brings oil up to operating temperature faster
- doesn't require extra thermostat
- takes up less space
- weighs less supposedly (haven't seen numbers on this)
- no added obstructions to front grille
- maybe cool oil better than air cooler, if radiator is sufficient
- probably could be accomplished with less hose/fittings overall compared to air coolers?

Basically to me it feels like a more elegant solution to oil cooling overall.

Only real disadvantage would be if it ends up putting in more heat than the radiator can handle. I have a feeling that if you are staying NA then that shouldn't really be an issue. It's hard to estimate just how much more heat you this will require the radiator to remove though.

The main thing I'm wondering about right now is how you would install such a thing. For the oil line a regular oil filter sandwich plate adapter should be fine I think. But where you would tap into the coolant?

I know some 350Zs have OEM oil-to-coolant coolers right under the filter. I've seen there is an extra nipple on their thermostat housing, but where does the other end of the coolant go.
I wonder if a 350Z thermostat housing will drop in to 370z so we could use that extra nipple? Or maybe the stock one could be tapped for this. This nipple is not particularly large, so whether it flows enough for cooling under high load is questionable.

Or would you just replace one of the hoses going to/from the radiator? I would think it would be nicer to put it somewhere where the coolant flows through it even when the thermostat is closed, but not sure if that really matters.

Another possibility could be to put it in line with the heater core hoses. Not sure how much flow that gets either.

Also, would the orientation of the cooler matter at all? Does it matter if the coolant or oil flows horizontal or vertical? Or can you basically mount it any way that fits?

Air-cooled oil coolers are way more effective than water based oil coolers. Coolant runs between 180F-210F, it would take forever to cool down your oil with coolant that warm. At the cost of $400, you are basically half way to a real oil cooler. Also the thought of a giant heat sink inside the engine bay is just plain stupid.

i agree cossie, 400 would get you a 19row and an added 150 gets a 25 with the mocal plate. The car would have a lot of heat with a cross flow cooler like that. There is a reason why nissan didn't have that in their car.

If it works for the AM Performance Grand AM car I don't see why it wouldn't work for a standard track car. Granted AM has a uprated radiator, but we're not driving 3 hour races either.

Yeah exactly what I'm thinking. I've read a couple people mention that AM performance is using a liquid cooler, but couldn't find any other information on it. Where are people getting the info? They've just seen the vehicles in person? Is there any pics or explanation online anywhere of their setup?

Unless you plan to remove safety features and bits and pieces of the engine, not sure where you are going to have room. Water=weight too. I am not saying they don't work, but pretty useless on a street car.

I don't think the added volume is that significant, the unit itself is fairly small. Granted the plumbing is a little tricky given that it is inline with radiator hoses.

Here's a couple pictures I found of the AM Performance setup, from their website's media page.
http://i.imgur.com/os0ps.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/gKyXn.jpg

They are using a C&R Racing heat exchangers.
I'm guessing it's an 18 row version just by eyeballing it and comparing to the dimension spec sheet

Subscribed!

Sounds promising. Could def help with over cooling. Right now I am idling at 160ish w my cooler. Makes me nervous and I'll have to fab a block off plate.

just get a mocal plate and go online to get the fittings from BAT in florida. They do the direct double male adapters for the mocal thermo adapter. cost 20bucks for fittings and 90 for the adapter.:driving:

I looked into this and almost bought one for my car, but then I was told it was a complete nightmare on the Berk 135i race car.

Yeah I think I read that post too. Sounded like they maxed out their radiator, but that's a whole other platform, so maybe they were already very close to needing a bigger radiator. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think any NA 370Zs are having any sort of coolant overheating issues. It seems like our radiator is not very close to being maxed out, so hopefully there is enough wiggle room to put a little more load on it.

I found that the Laminova oil coolers can be bought directly from Laminova for quite a bit cheaper. I was originally under the impression that Laminova just made the cores and that Mocal was building the oil cooler housing around them, but I guess not.
Laminova

I've got a bunch of other immediate expenses to deal with at the moment, but when I get some extra cash put aside, I think I'm going to go ahead and give this a try.

If I remember correctly the price for an assembled core was around $700.

The price is right there in the link in my above post as $323 for the oil cooler I'm looking at. Granted i still need some hoses and a oil filter sandwich plate adapter, but I don't think that's going to end up anywhere near 700.

pending on how long you want to wait, contact nissan north america. I got mine from them due to the fact that my car was running 240s from the get go. I got the 34 row cooler kit installed and a oil change at $0 cost. I think they want me to keep purchasing nissans lol. But I purchased my thermo adapter plate from gtm and ordered my an10 fittings from mocal so i can keep my an-10 lines. GTM wanted to charge me almost 900 for hoses and fittings and labor and plus it would be a smaller line. No thanx. :D

I called and talked to them directly..the one they recommended for the car with the right diameter adapters and everything came out to ~$700 and Im not sure that included lines or anything... I asked about ordering 10 of them and I think the price went down to $500. They don't stock pre-assembled ones, everything is made to order...

I know whats up...youre talking about laminova and Im talking about C&R Racing...

Ah ok, yeah I've mainly been talking about Laminova, but I did post the C&R pics from AM performance just to show that there is obviously some merit to oil-water based cooling setups. I sent the AM performance guys a PM asking for some input on why they chose the C&R or any other information on their setup but never got a reply.

The Laminova still looks like a very solid design to me and I think it has more surface area that the c&r because of the thousands of little fins on this thing.

I'm currently considering the Laminova C43-332 (43mm diameter core, 332mm length). Though they do have larger 54mm core versions which are more expensive (and even double core setups). I just sent an email to Laminova asking if they had any sort of recommendations as far as oil cooler sizing goes, so we'll see if they get back to me.

Actually water is more efficent at transfering heat. Plus you can mount the heat exchanger anywhere you like , yes plumbing will be tricky.
Also coolant temp exits the radiator at around 165 degress so this will quite good for the oil temps plus you reach operating temp sooner. The oil temps will be very consistent.

Has anyone made a move on this yet... I would be very interested in the results!

Can anyone confirm this? ^^^

Strongly considering going the coolant to oil cooler route and want to make sure I have a solid game plan before moving forward.

Right now I'm planning on going with the C43 core with a 330 mm length. According to Bat, Inc. that cooler should be equivalent to a 25-30 row air to oil cooler. Currently leaning towards a non-thermostatic sandwich plate since the radiator coolant will prevent overcooling. Also going to get actual hydraulic hoses with crimped ends in lieu of the push on stuff just for the added security.

Before anyone says just get the air to oil coolers, the Z is used for AutoX where the air cooler won't have air flow between runs.

Water can absorb way more heat than air -- its the primary reason to have a water cooled rather than air cooled engine...

http://www.exploratorium.edu/climate...-capacity.html

Laminovas are great on efficiency and space -- they tend to be a bit pricey tho.

Air cooled anything is only good on the basis of cost, simplicity, and weight savings -- otherwise, water wins every time.

is there still any interest on this?? sorry bringing this back for discussion

I purchased a laminova cooler recently, but haven't quite decided how to arrange this and route all the damn coolant and oil lines. At first I thought I could have it mostly vertical from the lower radiator hose to the engine inlet. But the thing is so long that it would be sticking out of my hood if I did that. Also this was under the assumption that I convert to aftermarket intake so the intake boxes are not in the way.

I guess my current idea is to lay it down along the bottom of the radiator, but then the coolant hose has to do a 180, and come back to the engine, the 180 pipes or silicone couplers are also really wide and have to worry about hitting the fan shrouds and crank pulley, and agh my brain is hurting again thinking about this.

I wish this thing had female NPT threads on the sides (like most other oil coolers and sandwich plate adapters) instead of these AN fittings because you could make it a lot more compact using something like this
http://i.imgur.com/P5sWuHi.jpg
rather than this sticking out of opposite sides.
http://i.imgur.com/rZDkFLW.jpg

I think I'm actually going to try drilling and tapping these AN flanges to convert them into NPT female fitting. I can maybe take some pics of how huge all this crap is later.

Yes. Faster oil warm up in the winter and constant cooling even at a standstill in the summer. Sounds great to me.

What I'd really love to see is a kit so that I don't have to piece mail this together. Most important parts would be molded radiator hoses to make this work.

What model did you get? Looking at their offering the longest one is only like 16" at most. Also did you plan on running this cooler with the stock radiator?

I am only seeing the benefits of the oil-water cooler in auto-x use here. For reference, I have a 34 row Setrab installed. No thermostatic adapter. In the cold months it sucks to have to start the car 10-15 minutes ahead of time, but wa no biggie after a few weeks. In the warm/hot months is where the larger cooler shines. Even if my car sat idle for an extended period of time, I never had any oil temp issues and I am in the people's republic of Texas.

That's the goal

Yeah it is 16" long but that's not taking into account that you'll need at least a 90 elbow for the coolant on each end, which adds quite a few more inches. If you measure from the bottom radiator outlet to the engine inlet, it is only about 14 inches vertical anyways. There's also plenty of crap in the way like fan shroud, AC line, intake pipe(absolutely no way with stock airbox), AC compressor pulley. There's really not much room at all to do it vertically. There is a small chance it could work if I hack up the coolant flanges and weld some tight radius Aluminum elbows directly to them. Still thinking about this...

Also I just ordered some new AN Female to Male 90 degree fittings(didn't think to look for that until just now) in place of 90 degree hose ends, these should make the overall assembly much less wide.
http://i.imgur.com/tz859dyl.jpg

Don't know what I was thinking initially. Was changing out my radiator today and can definitely see I was on something after seeing the limited room. :ugh2:

https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-r...0/IMG_5955.jpg

a little teaser of what we used to call our R-LINE cooler, will be back in action here shortly!

:yum:

Any pics of the actual cooler?

of course!

https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-j...0/IMG_5941.jpg

https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-9...0/IMG_5940.jpg

Cute little guy. By looks, that's the 92mm long cooler, an chance of either the 182mm or 332mm being offered?

We're going to be sticking with this size cooler. Very efficient for it's size, compact, and where we have it fitted it's almost like it belongs there!

How does this compare to the air to oil coolers as far as cooling capacity? ie. is this equivalent to a 25 row, 34 row, etc?

Is that 90 degree coolant elbow the 1.25" one? Isn't the stock hose 1.5"? I can't believe they charge $55 for that stupid elbow.