Oil type and temp Questions (houston area)

cossie1600

To make money and make a living?

You might want to take some chem classes and see how oil works before you preach about how great a giant oil cooler is for a street driven car.

roy'sz

hahaha, i used to test oil in the navy smart guy. maybe you should do some research online as far as what could cause sludge build up on oil before you go runnin your mough. also being that i got a 34 row cooler is an obivious sign of more mods to come and a cushion for the amount of heat my car will be putting out.

wstar

I'd just get the little 19-row if you're never going on a track. It will hold up to TX weather fine with that. Technically you're probably fine even without a cooler. On the worst summer days you might hit 240 on the street driving kinda recklessly, but that's really not a huge issue.

If you can, I'd recommend learning to do your own oil changes (and to check and change the other fluids on the car yourself as well). It only requires a minimum of tools, knowledge and effort, and frankly nobody (not the dealer and certainly not jiffylube) really cares about your car more than you do. Eventually they'll do something stupid or criminal out of haste (not use the oil you asked them to, not change the filter, over-tighten the drain plug, maybe even leave the drain plug loose so you dump oil later).

If you're really unwilling to do your own oil changes and really feel you need a cooler, IMHO your best option for worry-free maintenance is to have a Nissan dealership install the Nissan Motorsports oil cooler package for you, and have that dealership do all of your oil changes as well. Then there's only 1 party involved: if anything goes wrong, the dealership has to deal with it and cover it and there's nobody else to point a finger at.

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wstar

Re: the Mocal questions, I called them a couple of years ago when I bought my thermo plate, I've posted this like 3 times on different threads here somewhere:

The Mocal starts with both passages (oil cooler + bypass) open. The thermostat closes the bypass passage gradually over roughly the 175-185F range. So at 185+, basically all of your oil flow is forced through the cooler. Under 175, most of it takes the bypass route (least resistance), but a small amount will still flow through the cooler as well since the passageway is open (and this helps warm up the cooler and lines themselves, so it's not a sudden temp shock).

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dawudih

This means that the oil cooler passage does not have the capability to close?

wstar

Correct, the Mocal thermo plate has a permanently open passage to the cooler, there's no valve on it. There's also a bypass passage that skips the cooler, and when both are open it's the path of least resistance and gets "most" of the flow. When the thermo gets hot, the valve closes off the bypass path.

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