Hey all since a few of you all aswell as I have or plan to have/use large intercoolers the simple use of these makes oil and water temp's become a problem. I was recently thumbing through some picture gallery and I saw some very interesting cooler mounting methods. I don't have the link to the gallery at this point but i'll make some crude ps sketches for you all to illustrate the mounting styles. This may be a repost and i'm sorry if it is but I thought it was really nice.

Edit the pic is roughly viewing from the top without any hood or top covering. Just realised there might be a prespective problem if I didn't specify.




Basically the idea is to mount the coolers perpendicular to the car and make some ducting panels that trap air in a narrowing space which then forces the air through the coolers. This setup would require a pair of custom sized coolers to fit. The question that still remains unanswered is if there is enough space to fit them in like that.

 

I like it.

but I don't have a turbo, much less a front mount to compare sizes to.

 

hrmmmmmm i like it but i dont under stand one part???

the 2 not one oil cooler i didnt get that or mabye im just a huge dumb ***

 

 

Not a chance this would work. Where is the air going to go after it tries to pass through the coolers? It would hit a dead end unless you somehow vent the backs of the coolers to open air.

Lets go hypothtical here:
Assume the area of the grill opening is X. The area of the Radiator is 2X already. (IE: Twice as big as the opening in the grill) Now you want to add to more coolers that will add another 2X worth of area behind the grill. So your airflow through the radiator would be cut in half. Assuming that you could get the airflow coming into the grill area to make a SHARP 90 degree turn and pass through your 2 oil coolers equally, you would end up cutting the cooling capacity of the radiator in 1/2.

Plus there is no way that you'll get the airflow to make sharp 90 degree turns like that...It will follow the path of least resistance strait through the radiator.

 

I guess the IMSA car is going to blow its engine then eh?


I don't think you understood it fully. And yes it is obvious ther has to be an outlet for the air on the other sides of the coolers.

 

I'm usre it would require some work but i see no reason why it wouldn't fit/work

 

someone on this forum already did this (higgi) and says his temps dropped

 

ooh does he have pics?

I have no doubt temps would drop from the wider spread heat load.

 

Why not duct the air from the other side, then after passing through the oil-coolers, it would then pass through the Intercooler, Rad then out a hopefully vented hood? I can't see fast moving air heating up to much from the oil coolers that it would be useless by the time it hit the IC/Rad.

 

One of the reasons oil temps aswell as coolant temps become a problem is because of heatsoak. Before and after temp readings show how much heat is transfered by the air passing through the cores. I'd say re-route from the back of the oil coolers but mount the IC forward and duct the air to the radiator only. I would think the car would benefit most from cooler IC temps.

 

I saw one of the WRC cars that had the radiator mounted horizontaly just below the hood. They mounted 2 fans on the top side and put 2 reverse flow ducts towards the front of the hood. This left plenty of room for the intercooler and oil cooler. This set up was designed for one of the hotter rallies they had to run.

I think something like this setup could work quite well on an FC with all of the room in the front.

 

I beleive thats an H mount or a V mount.

 

The general rule is that frontal duct area needs to be 1/4 of the area of the heat exchanger, due to the fact that air slows down a whole bunch when it hits the exhanger, since only about 1/4 of its frontal area is actually holes that the air can pass through to the other side.

 

bump for higgi's pixs....

 

http://rx7cz.net/photos/workshop94/

Its in series (with high pressure oil regulator 80-85psi)

Oil temps were 110C before, now do not go over 90C whatsoever, most of the time around 80C. Both coolers retain original termostats.

Oil pressure at idle 2bar, cruising under 3000 rpm around 4bar and over 3000 rpm its 5bar+

Its in series because i didn`t want to make anything custom (oil cooler lines) and i had set of RB oil cooler lines laying around so i used them with no modification. Took us bit time to figure out position of both coolers to make it work with available hoses and fittings Thanks to Luciu$ for help.

 

My father (a retired engineer) and I were having a discussion the other day about whether series or parallel for the oil coolers is better. To know for sure requires hard numbers but it seems that running in parallel would work better than in series, since the oil is already significantly cooled when it exits the first cooler, reducing the second cooler's efficiency. The parallel setup also means that the oil stays in the cooler longer since flowing a given volume through a parallel setup requires a lower velocity through the cooler system to maintain a given flow rate. Pressure drop across the coolers would be reduced for the same reason.

 

And, apparantly the front cover oil outlet for the oil cooler may not be the best place for a modded car anyways.

As part of his oil mods Rob (Pineapple) taps the cooler outlet into the front side housings oil galley down low (like stock inlet from cooler on rear plate.). Though, I do not know if this is to work in conjucntion w/ his loop line that goes from a oil filter adapter to the same galley on the front side housing...

I was going to run parallel oil coolers w/ one off the unused stock front cover location and one of the Pineapple location and then merge the inlets into the stock location. Rob seemed to think that was an OK idea when I ran it past him.

 

I am unfamilar with which IMSA car you are refering too. Post a picture.

Anyway, The setup on Higgi's car is the proper configuration for dual oil coolers. Looknig at his pictures you'll see that the air passes through the oil coolers first and then through the radiator, unlike your drawing where you are trying to pass air over the 2 oil coolers and radiator all at the same time.

 

His picture is NOT what I am talking about at all. Thats just dual coolers.

Unless I am missing the perpendicular positioning of the coolers thats not even close to what I am talking about.

The Race car that I saw had this said IMSA on it so thats which imsa car would blow its engine if it did not work. Race cars normally are all function with exception of the sponsor decals.

 

Looks less efficient then the regular front mounted oil cooler. Remember that you need a fan to draw air through at low speeds. Ducting that fan could be a problem. Now, you could use two fans (one small one on each oil cooler), but that now means twice as many failure points. Also, I think you would have a problem directing enough air...

Now, whether this is used on an IMSA car is pretty much immaterial. It's probably safe to assume that car doesn't spend much time creeping in traffic.

Heat soak doesn't seem to be much of an issue with the stock oil cooler and front mounted intercooler, as long as there is some airflow (ie. fan) then soak is minimal. I would think that your mounting would create soak due to lack of flow.

 

That is true. Atleast someone is thinking. lol

Reason I brought this up is because a few people on here were having trouble keeping oil temps down with their new FMIC's

One thing came to my mind though what about the FD's that had two coolers (front facing) instead of just one like FC's did those use fans? Also I think the RX-8 has some coolers(not sure if its oil) in the front bumper. It would be interesting to see how they get air flow at low speeds/dead stop.


I guess I shoudl also expand the explenation of the setup I was envisioning...Basically we can all agree that the stock oil cooler is sized well for just about anything that we can throw at it as far as heat. So given its size we can cut it in half and find a PAIR of aftermarket coolers that total up the same Size as stock or a little larger than stock combined. One cooler would go on each side facing perpendicular to the front of the car.(stock would be parralel to the front in this case) I was thinking of them in series as far as the flow of oil. Custom lines would have to be made but with the AN adapters I am sure its not a terrible pain. Fabrication of air inlet ducts would have to be done. The ducts would act as scoops(which is how they would get flow) just like the TMIC scoop works . They would basically stick out in the path of the air comming in from the front nose opening. The benefit(given it works on a street car) would be three fold. 1) The main fan would have to pull the air through less cores(since the oil cooler isn't in the direct path anymore) 2) No heatsoaked air(comming off of the IC) would hit the oil cooler. 3) No DOUBLE heatsoaked air would hit the radiator(this would occure from passing through the IC and the OC)

NOTE:some heatsoaked air would obviously hit the rad. from the IC but it would logically be better since the oil cooler is no longer infront of it.


I'll see if I can add anything later.

 

The IMSA set-up w/ the horizontal mount oil cooler below and infront of the radiator was done purely to provide THE LOWEST OIL TEMPS POSSIBLE- no hidden compromises besides having to retain stock bumper cover openings (and possibly not allowing additional venting in hood, etc).

There was another thread on it in here where a member of the Mazda factory sponsored racing team was involved w/ the project.

Mazda told them to get the oil temps and coolant temps to XXX deg and xxx deg as this is where it made most power on dyno and they tried everything to get the oil temps down that low- ultimately getting it "close enough" w/ the horizontal oil cooler mounting.

Apparantly they use a small scoop directly on horizontal oil cooler core that is mounted in a cut-out in the belly pan in front of the radiator. Under the bellypan is a lower (or negative?) pressure area (Every heat x-changer vents out bottom of car stock or w/ FMIC, right) that is exaggerated by the use of a lower front airdam on bumper cover.

Higgi's set-up (and mine is similar w/ 1 cooler more forward in the lower position) is actually probably not so good- as when stacking heat x-changers (same intake and venting) I have read that you want to sandwich them as close as possible like stock. The larger the volume between the cores the more the air will slow as it expands after already slowing going through the 1st core; and it will have a harder time penetrating the 2nd core.

 

Thanks for the input!
I need to find a pic of the car I can't seem to locate it in my history. :/

Santiago

 

OOOK... Just because "You saw it on an IMSA car and it didn't blow up" doesn't mean that it's PRACTICAL or even ECONOMICALLY FEASABLE for a street driven car.

If you want to blow your money on custom oil coolers, lines and intricate ducting, by all means have fun.