[email protected] (Dave Williams)
Ford  30 Jun 1996
- -> Besides, my Cobra already has an oil cooler.  :)
- I was interested to see how the oil and water temps related to each other 
  with a block-adapter type oil cooler.  Jay's Corvette's oil cooler is 
  virtually identical to the one on your Cobra, a small adapter that uses 
  engine coolant. 
- The Corvette has an oil temp guage, which is not calibrated in any 
  meaningful fashion, and of course an oil temp sensor, which I was able to 
  read with Diacom on the little Compaq laptop I gave to Jay recently. At 96F 
  ambient, cruising at 80 to 85, it took almost fifteen minutes for the oil 
  temp to come up to the same temp as the coolant.  When we got on the back 
  roads heading to Millington he upped the speed to 110 or so, where it became 
  difficult to read the display at times (convertible, plus 315/35-17 Hoosier 
  gumballs all around) but the oil temp gradually went up to around 205 with 
  the coolant still around 180. 
- The long warmup time confirms my suspicion that the block adapter coolers 
  help, but their total thermal transfer capacity isn't great enough to move 
  heat very fast.  Of course, this was street driving.  At the track the 
  Corvette runs a lot hotter.  There's a "some guys rent the track and go like 
  hell" event coming up; once we find a way to anchor the laptop securely we 
  will do some data logging. 
- Anyway, the upshot of all this is, if you intend to run your car at track 
  events you might want to pop for the in-tank oil cooler anyway.

[email protected] (Dave Williams)
fangle  26 Oct 2000
- -> Help me on this one guys. Stone cold engine. You start it. And some
  -> of you guys think that cold coolant will begin to "warm" the engine
  -> oil?
- Just so.  Coolant temp rises considerably faster than oil temp.
- A friend's Corvette has one of those oil/water heat exchangers spliced 
  between the block and oil filter.  I've watched the oil and water temp on 
  the laptop while riding shotgun; the oil temp lags considerably behind the 
  water temp during warmup.  Once the engine is heat soaked, the oil temp is 
  determined more by load than anything else I could determine. 

[email protected] (Dave Williams)
fangle  26 Oct 2000
- -> minutes for coolant, 10 to 15 minutes for oil).  Also note that
  -> transmission oil warms up even slower (25 minutes or more).
- That agrees well with my trans temp gauge in TRX.  And when on the freeway, 
  with a small trans cooler and no lines to the radiator, the trans temp is 
  usually not much over ambient.