2012s on lots....where are the oil coolers?

chuckd05

350z's had basically the same oil cooler in them, and they decided to not give it to the 370z.

Very odd because Nissan had to know the oil temps got hotter than they should while developing the car.

350z's also didnt have an oil temperature gauge to my knowledge...

So its like Nissan said .... lets spend the money on an oil temperature gauge (so people can not let there oil get too hot), but we'll do that with the money we saved from removing the $30 oil cooler....

not sure why the vq37 runs oil hotter than the 35de or 35hr other than the lack of that oc they now added...

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09 370Z 6M PW - FBO Best 1/4 mile = 12.926 @ 109 SOLD -- 08 BMW 135i - FBO 12.1@120mph SOLD -- white 09 e92 335 Coupe Mtech - 11.9 @ 119 :-)

Mt Tam I am

I will wait for the future reports.

I speculate that this O/C will work fine in traffic, but still require more when pushed.

Now I await the answer.

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Pharmacist

actually it's the vvel. The swinging lever arms on top of the valves that go back and forth generate a lot of friction and heat. That's why the vq37 generates proportionately more heat than many other engines, and that's part of the reason why nissan uses diamond like coating and nano particles in ester oil, to try and reduce the friction.

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2009 370z Sport Touring/Nismo shift Knob/Z1 motorsports 34 row oil cooler

Pharmacist

That's kinda my point actually. That this oil cooler may just be a mere PR stunt to appease the magazine critics. The Z really doesn't have an oil temp problem on the road. Just on the track, most of the time at least. So if the oil cooler doesn't solve the overheating during prolonged track driving and the owner still has to get an aftermarket kit anyway, then what's the point of this cooler?

Funny that you mentioned brake pads since they too have a similar problem. Stock pads are more than good enough on the street but caused lots of problems on the track, including car and driver crashing a nismo. So in response nissan developed nismo pads that supposedly were better able to handle heat and brake fade. Only it turned out that these overpriced pads were a marginal improvement over the oem pad at best, and owners still had to get aftermarket pads for the track anyway.

But I agree with red zed however. Lets not put the cart before the horse. Lets wait until someone gets one of these 2012 cars and actually flogs them on a track. Who knows? Maybe that tiny oil to water cooler will actually perform admirably and i'll be forced to eat my words.

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2009 370z Sport Touring/Nismo shift Knob/Z1 motorsports 34 row oil cooler

Red__Zed

Did the 350 have this style cooler? I couldn't remember for sure...haven't looked at one in quite a while.

Because I know the 350 was prone to pretty high temps on the track as well....though not as severe as the 370.

cossie1600

I don't think 350 had a limp mode. I am betting that they will have the same problem. I have a 25R and I can barely do 20 min without having to do a slight cool down every now and then.

Red__Zed

I know it did not have a limp mode, but guys like Scott saw 300* temps...might just be because he runs harder than most.

I don't think any street able solution will be great for hard, extended runs, but 15 minutes with a decent driver would be nice.

ClevelandCWRU

Not actually true...Nanoparticles don't even play a role here, chemistry and some physics; it's chemical compatibility between the coating and an additive in the oil. Nissan's engineers and tribologists who worked on their Hydrogen free DLC coating used in the VQ37 and its relationship with the "ester oil" published their research. I do not have the rights to redistribute specifically what their findings were, but they have been widely recognized for their success reducing valvetrain friction. In fact, they were able to achieve friction levels in the "superlow" regime (coefficient of friction <0.01) at the boundary condition...on par with the rolling contact friction level of needle roller bearings.

This is of course, assuming the engine is being run with the recommended ester oil. Other oils can (and do) still perform well in this engine, but the "magic" doesn't happen unless the specially matched oil is used. Use whatever oil you want, you won't be harming your engine either way, but it was designed to use the ester oil (which in turn was designed by Nissan to be used specifically in engines using a H-Free DLC...yes, they did actually engineer this oil blend, can't say who manufactures it). The benefits of the ester oil aren't necessarily capturable in the traditional UOA, and it's also not a super-long service life blend either so it's not surprising to be at all that the oil doesn't perform spectacularly in UOA. The nerd in me says to use the ester oil, but change it more frequently you would your typical high-performance synthetic.

There's countless threads here and elsewhere filled with misinformation about how their ester oil and VVEL work (or don't work), as someone who has thoroughly read (and has the education to understand) their research (before I even bought a 370Z), what Nissan's accomplished is quite impressive on a scientific level, let alone commercializing the technology and applying it to production internal combustion engine.

Ok, end rant...sorry for getting off topic, back to the oil cooler!

Red__Zed

While it is impressive on a scientific level, it's not really shown to help in the real world.

It's more of a great lesson in project management. Here's what happens when you give a bunch of engineers a budget and very little control....you get super cool oil that doesn't work.

wstar

Having logged and monitored my oil and water temps in the past, it seems like our water temps have a lot more headroom than our oil temps do in most conditions. In other words, it's always seemed that the radiator had more cooling capacity left on the table, and the problem was just that there's not much that can do to help the oil temps (since the only xfer between the two is through the engine block).

The oil:air coolers we've been adding to the cars directly cool the oil at the expense of cutting into the cold airflow budget of the radiator, and still the radiator system copes fine on temps (at least in part because keeping the oil cooler reduces the load on the system in general). Any sort of oil:water interface is only going to increase the thermal coupling between the two bringing them more into balance and keeping everything cooler.

The small unit at the filter may not be "enough" cooling to track without additional oil cooling (because it doesn't look big enough to transfer enough heat between the two), but I definitely think it will help, and that it will reduce the size requirements for any additional oil:air cooling needed while also removing some of the warmup problems we have today with just oil:air.

Getting your oil to 280 is going to cause problems regardless, and the point of this is to make that less likely than before, not to make 280F oil temps sustainable or tolerable.

The big real-world data point in favor of this system is AM Performance's track system. They're using a slightly larger and better-designed oil:water interface, on a slightly better radiator, and running in long hard real race conditions without additional oil:air cooling.

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ClevelandCWRU

Controlling temperature wasn't the driving force in reducing friction in this case. The goal was to decrease power losses and increase fuel efficiency, both of which were accomplished. A lesser important side effect/benefit was that less heat was generated due to lower friction.

I say less important because the amount of heat generated from the valve lifters is relatively insignificant relative to everything else happening inside an engine (ie. combustion), and a very small component in controlling engine temperatures. You can verify this by running a typical high-performance synthetic compared to the ester oil and watching temps. It's unlikely you would see any statistically significant variance in overall engine temps. between the two.

Red__Zed

You actually will see a notable drop with a good synth due to the poor lubrication qualities of the ester oil.


You're what, a Chem E grad student? Maybe a couple years working?

wstar

It's unlikely that their esters are super special anyways, most likely the esters found in many high-end synthetics these days are compatible and accomplish the same goal intended for the DLC while being better all-around oils. I think the point with the ester oil was not to run a crappy regular dino oil that was not only a poor oil to begin with, but also lacked the esters (i.e. if they didn't put out this oil and this recommendation, people might be taking the car to jiffy lube and getting random generic dino oil).

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ImportConvert

I'd like to see a dyno test. What you are saying basically amounts to: If you run Ester oil, it's like installing roller rockers.

Well roller rockers are worth about 10-15bhp at this level, so lets see some proof on the dyno. Run Ester for 1500 miles and dyno, then run Mobil 1 for 1500 miles and dyno again. SAE corrected both times. Then drain the Mobil 1, put the ester back in, and roll it back on the dyno and see if the power level goes back up after the car cools down and is run again after the oil change.

THEN I will be a believer.

ClevelandCWRU

Nope. First of all, tribology is a mechanical engineering topic, not chemical engineering.

I worked in research for several years, now I work in industry.