Heat problems on track: TECH. Read before adding an oil cooler!

[tigeo]

There are plenty of options on Amazon. I just searched black aluminum tape.

I hate my shiny tape I can see through my grille. There. I said it. I will Amazon some.

 

[AzteCypher]

This will do it...

Awesome work here by the way. Interested in seeing the data.

 

[Redslaya]

Data has been collected, waiting for @DerHase to analyze.

Did logging with both the duct on and off.

 

[DerHase]

Going to make a few posts in a row here going over the data. We didn't do exact apples to apples comparisons (different test routes when doing the cooler blocked off and open on pass side vs what @Redslaya did for these last tests with the cooler centered with and without duct) but here goes a summary of results:

First off we'll start where we started... passenger side mounted oil cooler:

At cruising on the highway with AC OFF it hovers at 30F over ambient. Not really abnormal or anything:

Doing a quick pull 2-4th gears it would be down to around 111F, but actually rise up to 115F by the end of the pull. In 81F ambient.

Result: basically stays right at 30F over ambient at BEST. This would actually get worse the harder you drive it - hotter oil cooler on track = more heat into the IC.

Histogram of min values seen only under WOT. Greener boxes = spent more time there and are the ones that will matter more:

 

[DerHase]

So next up was the oil cooler getting blocked off entirely. We used cardboard on both sides of the oil cooler as a quick and dirty way to limit (hot) airflow from the oil cooler from hitting the IC.

Cruising with AC OFF we were seeing about 19F over ambient which is a huge improvement:

On a quick pull, we were seeing 10-15F of ambient. This wasn't quite as long of a pull as before, but whatever. We were just looking to prove a point that the oil cooler was the issue at the time. (note the 10F of ambient does NOT show up in the histogram because the IAT continued to drop after he was no longer WOT).

Minimum values seen across a few different logs we took:

 

[DerHase]

So @Redslaya built a duct for the oil cooler, but due to AC lines in the way, he had to move it. So we decided to test with the cooler center-mounted, withOUT the duct first.

Highway driving:

He actually took 2 pulls with this setup. The first one was a bit better at min 103.9F IAT:

Second one down to 106. The AAT "changed" a tad, but I kind of take it's readings with a grain of salt. Could also just be hotter oil going through the cooler.

Histogram shows about 15F over ambient in the most heavily hit cells:

 

[DerHase]

And that brings us to testing WITH the duct installed (as posted HERE above).

KEEP IN MIND: This is still with no hole cut in the bottom of the bumper. I think that giving the oil cooler air somewhere to go, rather than just spilling below/towards the bottom of the condenser/IC will help further. I suspect this one tests best a bit because it shields the direct hot oil cooler air from hitting the IC, but it's NOT super noticeable overall. 2-3F or so. I predict that on track, this would become a bigger difference (with the ductless oil cooler being worse by a slightly larger margin).

Cruising:

And a quick pull bringing IATs down to ~12-13F of ambient in places, averaged just a tiny bit higher than that:

And histogram with WOT:

 

[Redslaya]

So TLDR:

Put your oil cooler in the center of the lower grill, and adding an exit duct probably helps too

 

[DerHase]

And fancy graph to make it look more science-y.

 

[tigeo]

View attachment 286416

And fancy graph to make it look more science-y.

 

[tigeo]

It makes me wonder how the Racingline one would work out here. It's smaller (1/2 size of his) but mounts to p. side.

Track testing will be interesting but looks like it may not need the duct when center mounted....so just hammering that IC outlet with hot air basically.

 

[Redslaya]

It makes me wonder how the Racingline one would work out here. It's smaller (1/2 size of his) but mounts to p. side.

Track testing will be interesting but looks like it may not need the duct when center mounted....so just hammering that IC outlet with hot air basically.

So, this setrab 6-series 19 row cooler is technically undersized for my application, and that certainly shows on hot days when it simply delays the oil overheating. Especially at a large track like VIR, i think you will find the smaller racing line oil cooler to be woefully inadequate for keeping temps under control.

 

[tigeo]

So, this setrab 6-series 19 row cooler is technically undersized for my application, and that certainly shows on hot days when it simply delays the oil overheating. Especially at a large track like VIR, i think you will find the smaller racing line oil cooler to be woefully inadequate for keeping temps under control.

It's interesting that some have reported the RL sorting their oil temp issues. So many variables here. Does your cooler isolate oil from coolant or is that factory connection/heat exchanger still in place with the one you have? You have Iabed one right? Does that use the factory oil filter?

I think the oil cooler issue is a nested loop situation. Oil gets hot. Cooler removes heat. Radiant heat from the oil cooler transfers to coolant because cooler is in front of radiator. Coolant capacity to handle heat diminishes increasing oil temps. And the cycle continues. Clearly having the large oil cooler in front of the IC outlet increased IAT which makes sense; moving to center sorted that based on the data collected. The duct looks to not be necessary as the additional heat through the cooling stack is being managed by the IC now in that center-mounted position.

What I'm trying to say here is that maybe bigger isn’t better w/r to oil coolers. It's possible a smaller oil cooler may actually work better in the front-mounted position. The larger one in place of your aux radiator out of the main cooling stack should be ok. All a hypothesis of course and keep in mind I'm a geologist.

Do we have any data from someone running a RL oil cooler?

 

[Redslaya]

It's interesting that some have reported the RL sorting their oil temp issues. So many variables here. Does your cooler isolate oil from coolant or is that factory connection/heat exchanger still in place with the one you have? You have Iabed one right? Does that use the factory oil filter?

I think the oil cooler issue is a nested loop situation. Oil gets hot. Cooler removes heat. Radiant heat from the oil cooler transfers to coolant because cooler is in front of radiator. Coolant capacity to handle heat diminishes increasing oil temps. And the cycle continues. Clearly having the large oil cooler in front of the IC outlet increased IAT which makes sense; moving to center sorted that based on the data collected. The duct looks to not be necessary as the additional heat through the cooling stack is being managed by the IC now in that center-mounted position.

What I'm trying to say here is that maybe bigger isn’t better w/r to oil coolers. It's possible a smaller oil cooler may actually work better in the front-mounted position. The larger one in place of your aux radiator out of the main cooling stack should be ok. All a hypotheses of course and keep in mind I'm a geologist.

Do we have any data from someone running a RL oil cooler?

I do have the iabed setup that removes the factory heat exchanger and retains the factory filter.

To be frank, ive seen a lot of comments from people in the community claiming certain things are sufficient to solve their problems which in my opinion are unacceptable. "DS2500s are a great track pad!" for example. However, everyone's use case is different. what might be sufficient on a stock GTI cant keep up with the added thermal input of a is38 on a tuned R. When i was running 2:24s at VIR i had a lot less themal issues than now when im running 2:12s. A track like VIR with large WOT sections will be different than a short track without long straights. People also have different standards for what is "solved", I want oil temps under 260, but some people are happy starting at 278 all day long.

Setrab has done the calculations on their coolers to determine their cooling capacity, which you can see here (mine is the 50-619-7612):

"EOC hp and btu/hr range based on specific performance parameters that if varied may result in different performance results. Low EOC hp and btu/hr range based on typical wet sump high-performance application and typical variable parameters. High EOC hp and btu/hr range based on typical dry sump high-performance application and typical variable parameters. Wet Sump Parameters include: oil flow rate, 5gpm; 20/50 engine oil or similar; 130ºF ITD; 60mph airflow. Dry Sump Parameters include: oil flow rate, 8gpm; 20/50 engine oil or similar; 140ºF ITD; 80mph airflow."

a smaller cooler simply does not have the thermal capacity to work with higher hp numbers. its physics.

 

[tigeo]

I do have the iabed setup that removes the factory heat exchanger and retains the factory filter.

To be frank, ive seen a lot of comments from people in the community claiming certain things are sufficient to solve their problems which in my opinion are unacceptable. "DS2500s are a great track pad!" for example. However, everyone's use case is different. what might be sufficient on a stock GTI cant keep up with the added thermal input of a is38 on a tuned R. When i was running 2:24s at VIR i had a lot less themal issues than now when im running 2:12s. A track like VIR with large WOT sections will be different than a short track without long straights. People also have different standards for what is "solved", I want oil temps under 260, but some people are happy starting at 278 all day long.

Setrab has done the calculations on their coolers to determine their cooling capacity, which you can see here (mine is the 50-619-7612):
View attachment 286441
"EOC hp and btu/hr range based on specific performance parameters that if varied may result in different performance results. Low EOC hp and btu/hr range based on typical wet sump high-performance application and typical variable parameters. High EOC hp and btu/hr range based on typical dry sump high-performance application and typical variable parameters. Wet Sump Parameters include: oil flow rate, 5gpm; 20/50 engine oil or similar; 130ºF ITD; 60mph airflow. Dry Sump Parameters include: oil flow rate, 8gpm; 20/50 engine oil or similar; 140ºF ITD; 80mph airflow."

a smaller cooler simply does not have the thermal capacity to work with higher hp numbers. its physics.

Ah because you have no factory heat exchanger now so that makes more sense needing this size. The smaller RL one is working along side the factory heat exchanger more like a booster not the sole cooler so doesn't need to be as big...at least that's how it makes sense to me.

Faster times = more heat to manage for sure. I saw my highest oil temps (272) when I was able to get more comfortable and push harder to get into the 2:18s. Before that it was typically 240-260.