Oil Cooler whine?
 

Is this normal? I am getting a slight whine after I got an oil cooler installed by Nissan.

Here is an audio recording of the whine but its not super easy to tell in the recording (used my iphone):

http://box.houkouonchi.jp/20110824%20124034.m4a

This whine doesn't bother me *that* much if it is normal just was unexpected. Otherwise I am really happy about the decrease in oil temps though. It was hot on my drive back (almost 100F) and the temps stopped raising at noticeable speed once it got up to about 170F. It didn't get up to 180F until almost 10 minutes on the freeway and got up at around 185 F (and topped off) by the time I got home (23 miles into the drive).

I can definitely live with the whine if that's normal.

Here is a snapshot from my iphone @ around 6 miles into the trip (mostly on the freeway):

http://box.houkouonchi.jp/oil_cooler_temps.jpg

Before when it was about this hot out I would see oil temps in the 235-240 range.

Which cooler did you get?

Not sure on the whine, but I'd get a thermocoupler

It is the one nissan makes (nismo). Part number:

21300-ss370

An oil cooler install should not induce a whine. I would worry about this if it truly is associated with the installation (it started afterward). Loose fitting??? I would have them double-check everything.

Thanks for that! So it sounds like this is semi-normal. If its not damaging the car I don't know if its worth the trouble of fixing it right now. Maybe I will try to get it fixed on my next oil change.

Mind if I ask what you paid for the factory cooler installed?

With tax, and cost of the oil change (to install) with the ester oil it came out to around $1150 out the door.

On the way into work tonight (cooler out) I didn't go over 168 F while I was on the freeway for 40 miles.

So changes were:

Hot day:

235-240 -> 185

Cold/normal day:

220 -> 168

Mountain road:
265 (turned off engine) -> ?

Also I seemed to get ~1 MPG better than usual got 28.5 MPG instead of around 27-27.5.

I am thinking on Sunday I will take it out to Glendora Mountain Road and see how it handles things this time.

Wow, again, get a thermo coupler. Running at 168 is awful for your engine.


Also, your engine shut down at 265?

Sounds like he shut it down because he got a bit paranoid. If he just cruised in a higher gear for a couple of minutes it would have come back down in no time.

Chris is correct I shut down because I didn't want to push the engine hard when it was running that hot.

Please educate me why running at 168 is so awful for the engine. I find it odd its awful when I am getting better gas mileage. I got 27.2 MPG on my way home today when I am usually in the 25-26 range (I pretty much never see over 26.5), so definitely getting a noticeable increase in MPG.

It seems to me that the Nissan oil cooler kit comes with a thermostatic sandwich plate. I am almost sure of it.

Mine also whining like hell , are you running thermostatic adapter sandwich ?

No, the Nismo oil cooler does not come with a thermostatic plate, however, you can buy one and add it to the kit w/o issue.