Overheating issue with 2013 370z?
 

Hello all,

I have a 2013 touring sport 6/MT with 300 miles and I've been noticing on initial startup of the car and driving it, the car is very alive with shifting and acceleration. I live in Chicago, IL and the temps right now are in the upper 70's, lower 80's with high humidity. After about 20-30 mins of driving, I notice that the car starts driving sluggishly. The temps on the oil gauge are close to 220F. Acceleration and shifting are sluggish.

I have done a search on this and it seems that the car has a overheating problem? I'm wondering if this is contributing to the sluggish performance in warm temp's and high humidity OR if that is how the car behaves after driving it for more than 20 mins.

Should I invest in buying an aftermarket oil cooler and tune?

Thank You

Get yourself an oil cooler.

How hard are you beating the poor bítch that your temps are hitting 220 with the factory oil and "cooler"...


And yeah, buy an oil cooler

Tune wont matter on oil temps. An aftermarket oil to Air cooler is more efficient than the oil to water one the 12+'s have.

Considering that I live in Chicago and the traffic, I can't beat her that hard. Yes I will accelerate hard from time to time but it's mostly city streets and dealing with traffic.

Daily city driving with high humidity is actually worse than long highway drives on temps.

The fan control the tune allows will go a long way toward making the car run cooler. An oil cooler is still required though.

My tuner never mentioned anything about being able to manipulate that... Hmm.


I noticed no differences before/after tune in coolant temps. Of course an LED gauge is far from accurate at showing differentiation of temps.

If he didn't mention it, it's likely he didn't touch it. Being able to make the fans come on earlier is huge.

He didn't turn off the top speed limiter either, so I would say you're probably right... :ugh2:

220 shouldn't cause it to run "sluggish" take that brand new car to the dealership and get it checked out.

Mine hits 220 often when we have hot days out here, but I have had it hit that when just playing a bit on a 60 degree night. It still didn't get sluggish. This should not be happening an oil cooler is always a good thing but your car should have one stock shouldn't it?

The car is not pulling timing, but he might be having some heat soak with the stock intakes.
The plastic boxes help a little but once it gets the engine bay temps up it is hard to get them down.

High oil temps in a 370Z you say? Hmmmm... Never heard of it.

220 doesn't sound out of line to me either. Just to rule something out, when you say "initial startup" you're not talking about first thing in the morning when the air is cool vs. later in the day when it's not, right? (not trying to be a ****)

I can drive for about an hour or so in mildly spirited (I know, subjective term...) city driving without hitting 4th/5th gear much and see 220 oil temps until I get into 5th for a while or something like that. Never seen a performance impact. Once I stay in 5th a while (usually on the freeway) I'll see the temps plummet.

I've been under the impression that I should be worried if I ever see 250+, but I shouldn't hit that with any normal driving unless I track it.

Sorry should've been more specific. No not first thing in the morning. Later in the day, when the temp's are still warm and humid.

Isn't there something to do with Where the temp sensor is in relation to coolers, that it's reading oil not in the pan, but somewhere else, so it's usually 20*F off or so? So when you see 180*F, your actual temp in the motor is around 200*F?

You've got 300 miles on it. Take it to the dealer. Don't put any aftermarket parts on it yet until it gets a clean bill of health.

any diagnostic tools I can use to troubleshoot before taking it in to the dealer?

I wouldn't even do that much. I'd just take it in. Take the tech for a drive if you need to.

220 is normal for this car regardless of oil cooler or not, I have the stock cooler plus 34 row cooler, still hit 220+ on traffic.

How was getting the aftermarket cooler installed with the OEM cooler. Looking at putting one on a 12, and wondering how to put the sandwich plate. If there's room, or needing a filter relocate kit?

Even before any of my mods I would get 220* all the time during the summer. Personally I don't think 220* is going to cause a problem.

OP, one thing you can do that helps the oil temps is to turn the AC on. I use this trick when I'm autocrossing between runs.

220 isn't bad at all. You want the oil hot enough to burn off any condensation. I sit at 205-215 with a 34r cooler pretty much regardless of ambient temps.

Up in MD/PA, I can't get mine to budge over 180* without seriously pushing. :icon17:

I almost feel like my cooler is too much, but I got it when I was in Phoenix, and I plan on TT later on. So figured, it will suffice.

so does anyone in general experience sluggishness when driving after a while?

You might want to block off part of the cooler for now. Too cold is as bad as too hot.

Tell me about it... I forgot to put it on before winter. :facepalm: Yeah, 160* was a hard drive. :icon17:

Nice to know this, I live in FL and in the summer it's dead nuts hot. A 34r cooler is in my future and I would be worried if I hit 220 driving in traffic.

My experience post-oil cooler is the oil temp approaches 200 if either: a) heat soak induced city driving, which feels sluggish or b) driving like it's stolen. Other than that, the needle floats between 180 - 195 or lower when cruising on the highway.

However, pre-oil cooler my experience was basically the same as the OP. Oil temps were regularly between 215 - 230 or higher if driving even slightly hard. And I could forget about canyon runs; the temps would skyrocket to the 240 - 260 territory.

I have the same issue on mine. When i hit 220 I enter limp mode and it bogs down. Known issue. I guess a oil cooler and tune with fan control mod will help.

Just did this today with a kit from Z1 Motorsports. Added a Mocal thermostatic sandwich plate on top of the factory plate. Didn't leave much room for the filter, but was easily able to get the smaller stock filter on. Might have been able to squeeze the larger Puralator L14610 filter in there, but it would have nearly touched the frame rail.

To the OP's original question, I regularly see 220+ in city driving, and have never felt the car was "sluggish" in the least. As many have said, 220 isn't high at all for oil. Now I hope I will see some reduction with the 25 row I just installed today. We're already pushing 100+ in the Phoenix, so I won't be seeing temps in the 80's until October!! We'll see......

Yes !! even after putting a 25 row cooler on if i drive thru town my oil temp used to be 220 now around 200 by the oil temp gauge and anything over 190 and it does feel sluggish . since i wasnt ready to get an uprev tune i followed what kennys370z did and hooked up a switch so i can turn the damn cooling fans on whenever the hell i want and they run on high not half speed and now have almost virtually no lag in acceleration . finally i can drive in town without coming home disgusted at how slow it is when its hot felt like my car was having an epileptic fit before when i press the gas was so frigging annoying . if you have been tuned already call them up and have them do the fan control mod .

I use the PL14612 which is shorter than the 10. Allows you to have more grasp around it to grip/turn. Recently swapped one on a 2012 and it was still close to tight. I'm cautious about recommending a thermostatic plate, even though its the way to go... Worried about clearance. :(

on a 2012-13 adding the sandwich plate it gets a bit tight in space with the hoses but you can install np. Sometimes the stock cooler or sandwich plate will rotate a bit when doing oil changes and will need to tighten it up...

I'm guessing no one has tried tackling removing the Stock Oil/Water cooler, and just installing an Oil/Air cooler?

I'm not sure I believe that the car is pulling timing or any kind of limp mode at 220. Does anybody have any logs of something like that occurring? Stock I saw 240 regularly with the only performance loss coming because it was over 100 outside, not because of oil temps.

I always thought the dreaded number was 260*? If you saw 240 to back off...

Me too, until people in this thread claimed to hit limp mode at 220.

I can say for a fact that I ran my oil up to 250* F a few weeks ago at an autox event and the car did NOT go into limp mode. Now it's possible that it was starting to pull some timing but I don't know for sure.