Hi everyone, I am thinking seriously of installing a oil cooler on my Xa. Anyone have any experience with this? Living in Santa Ana California and driving to Riverside (to pick up Beautiful Leslie) I think is alot of hot temperature. I dont race my car or drive hard, I will put a cold air intake, strut bar, lowering spring's on later but thought helping the engine a little might be in first order.
Any thought's?
Also I would like to have a Scion meet in So. Cal!!

 

i don't think it's needed unless you are hualing heavy or racing all day. anyway, check out summit racing's catlog as they have cheaper diy kits.......

 

If your simply looking to have the engine run cooler, then I strongly suggest you instead get a beafier radiator. It will do a much better job at keeping the temperatures down than an oil cooler. Water has much better thermal absorbsion/conduction than oil.

The only time that you might use an oil cooler as opposed to a water based heat exchanger is when there isn't an option for water. For example, differentials (no water option), transmissions (no water option), or power steering (no water option). Turbos typically use both, but require an oil cooler to keep the oil temps from getting too high BECAUSE of the turbos heating them up more than the engine does, and also to prevent the oil from cooking and caking up inside the turbos bearings and eventually damaging it.

If you STILL want to install an oil cooler, I believe the options typically avail run the cooler in series?(it's been a while since I looked) with the engine with a check valve. Some have a pressure check valve, but I'd recommend a temperature check valve. You may have to get that separately. Basically it bypasses the cooler until you reach a peticular temperature, then runs the oil through the cooler. Hoses, bypass/check valves, and new oil filter adapter, plus a oil cooler element are all that's needed. I've installed a larger 18 row Earl's oil cooler on my TwinTurbo Z, but I think that'd excessive for the xA. If anything, a simple small ~5 row should be fine, but honestly, and anybody with a physics/engineering background will back me up, water will be much more efficiant.

Get yourself some Redline Water Wetter and put a half bottle inside (we throw the whole bottle in our 3liter engines). This helps water adhere to surfaces better, helping it to better soak up heat. If the car will mostly be run in the hot weather and NEVER see freezing temperatures, run a much higher percentage of water to antifreeze, if not 100%. For our Z's that we run on the race track on 110F days, we run Redline water wetter w/100% or almost 100% water only, with bigger radiators.