| BGTV8 |
06-23-2010 04:43 PM |
Tao, you might want to consider an oil cooler AND a sump extender to permit a larger quantity of oil to help manage temperatures.
When I first took my Zed out on a closed road for some serious hi-speed driving (I participate in a number of closed road events at Sandown, Philip Island and other places where we can use our cars to their design potential without the risk of Inspector plod seizing our cars), I hit oil temp problems straight away (within 4 laps actually - less than 12kms). If the oil temp rises above 137DegC, the ECU puts the car into limp-home mode (<4000rpm rev limit, cuts back on ignition, blah blah).
As a conseqeunce, I have had a Stillen oil cooler kit, and a sump extender kit fitted.
Despite what a Nissan dealer may say, this will not invalidate your new vehicle warranty, rather, you need to be in a poisition to confirm that the root cause of any incident is not related to these additions - the law is quite clear on this point, so you simply need either to have confidence in your own ability if you fit these yourself, OR engage a reputable automotive engineering shop to fit them for you.
In any event, as soon as you start to use big revs, that involves the cam tricky-gear doing its thing (which is oil pressure actuated), you start to subject the oil to a greater workload ... there are lots of posts on this subject.
Bottom line, you are safe for "normal" driving unless ambient temps are really high (well over 45 degC) AND you are flogging the guts out of the car - either really high average speed (not sensible in our nanny-state in Victoria and probably the rest of Oz), or you are attempting to break you own personal record on the climb up Mt Buller for instance.
Without the oil cooler, the highest temps I saw last summer in normal driving was 115DegC, which is a bit hot, but well within tolerance. The minimum specification oil in the book can run up to ~140DegC without too many problems (and hence this is why Nissan has programmed limp-home mode into the ECU at 137DegC oil temp). Using a high quality fully synthetic oil is cheap insurance in my view, as these oils will tolerate higher temps, and given that I take my car out onto a closed road to use it at the upper end of its design limits regularly, I have chosen to fit an oil cooler and a sump extender to permit a little over 6 litres of oil inside the engine) - all of which is designed to resolve the design flaw created by Nissan manufacturing the vehicle without an oil cooler in the first place.
Those with a 4-wheel drive bent might be aware that Nissan produced the first version of the 3.0 turbo diesel with a sump that was too small, caused oil temps to rise and eventually a hole would burn thru a piston (part of the cooling in this engine comes from oil sprays up underneath the piston to remove combustion heat). Since the sump was too small, the oil overheated and the piston ran too hot and melted a hole ..... solution was simple, extend the sump and put more oil into the sump, and use a larger oil cooler. There is a lesson here for those of us that use our Zed's at the upper end of its performance envelope ....
RB
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