- Joined
- Sep 28, 2002
- Messages
- 39,798
Well, it's been awhile ..so I'll tell you what I've got done. Keep in mind that I'm on a budget and have some time restraints for tinkering ..so the advancement is slow. I've had a couple of minor milestones conquered ..so I'll share them.
First let me say that I've had no consumption to date. No ticks or complaints out of the HLAs ..regardless of the oil temp. It's been run mainly in urban semi-taxi service for the past 2.5 months ..but has seen highway usage on a regular basis. Since this involves two coolant
il heat exchangers ..oil warming was never an issue.
The challenges/problems:
The Mitsubishi 3.0 V6 must have a very delicately balanced cooling system with virtually no reserve capacity at idle. Hindsight sees why there's a heater control valve ..and we assume that the heater core is of inherently high resistance to flow. By running this full flow, I was robbing the system of capacity to push coolant across the radiator. My only concern/symptom is that the idle fan cycle is extremely long. Where normally a minute would be long, now 5 minutes is not uncommon. You can watch the oil temps cycle up and down with the fan running. The PCM must have a fairly broad set point for the onff action.
In an attempt to keep the water flow intact (which essentially bypasses the radiator being T'd into the heat circuit below the heater control valve) and unload some of the excess coolant btu's AND keep the oil temp lower, I installed a Hayden tube fin oil cooler that I bought on Ebay a few years ago. I'm unsure of its efficiency, but it's plenty big (about 24x12). This resulted in no real difference in idle oil or coolant temps but did maintain highway oil temps @ 175F+/-. So, high speed control appeared to have been achieved.
I was about to install my Permacool oil thermostat to cut out the Hayden until the oil had reached higher temps (according to Permacool this modulates at around 180F) when I got a revelation. If I plug both outlet ports of the oil thermostat and run it in line with the outlet coolant line to the exchangers, it will choke off most of the flow when it reaches 180F.
This worked, sorta. The oil thermostat indeed works as designed in this capacity. Unfortunately, I still have the long fan cycling ..but now the oil is at a much lower temperature. Instead of (at idle) watching it go from 195F to 205F and then back down to 190F (and repeat), I now see 185F as a peak ..and will even have a negative exchange rate. That is, the oil will come out of the motor @ 185F and return @ 180F (+/- a few ticks). This shows that the coolant must be below 180F at that point in the engine.
My next installation is an addition oil thermostat where I had intended it to be ..taking the Hayden out of the equation until the oil warms to 180F. The other side effect of this coolant flow adjustment is that highway speeds can drive the oil temp below 160F ..which kinda overshoots the target of making this 10 weight oil appear like a 20 weight at operating temp.
I'll also be replacing the OEM sender (OBDI = sensor and sender) with a digital thermal couple and add that reading to my dash so I can get a grip on what the sensor is seeing to run the fan.
My next step on attempting to choke the flow a bit more may be to reduce the current 5/8" lines to 1/2" or even to 3/8". This, naturally, adds more clamps and nylon reducers. I had considered seeing if I could find a TCS vacuum switch of the right range and have it automatically close a vacuum controled valve ..but that's more research than I want to get into.
This is one cobbled together setup ..but we're getting there.
Once everything is setup I'll run a baseline warm up time. Before I put in the thermostat choke ..it would stabilize in about 10 miles (9 of that being highway @ 60-65 mph - or about 10 minutes from turning the key). After this new benchmark, I'll install dual big filters after the oil thermostat ..but before the Hayden cooler. This should show if a 10+ quart sump can warm as fast as a 6,5 quart sump (it appears that the Eaton exchangers and the Hayden cache about a quart and a half of oil).
I want to do a UOA on the current fill ..but with so many new/used parts (the new Hayden is copper and I'm using used 80's Crown Vic 351 police package lines) and the number of times I've tinkered with the hoses and fittings, I'm uncertain if anything would be gleaned from it at this time. I believe that I'll do a change out when I add the big filters ..at which time I'll do a few hundred mile "in engine VOA" and then follow up with a 3k UOA to see what's up.
I'll snap some pic's of the current setup and post them in a few hours. The octopus is getting wild.
First let me say that I've had no consumption to date. No ticks or complaints out of the HLAs ..regardless of the oil temp. It's been run mainly in urban semi-taxi service for the past 2.5 months ..but has seen highway usage on a regular basis. Since this involves two coolant
il heat exchangers ..oil warming was never an issue.The challenges/problems:
The Mitsubishi 3.0 V6 must have a very delicately balanced cooling system with virtually no reserve capacity at idle. Hindsight sees why there's a heater control valve ..and we assume that the heater core is of inherently high resistance to flow. By running this full flow, I was robbing the system of capacity to push coolant across the radiator. My only concern/symptom is that the idle fan cycle is extremely long. Where normally a minute would be long, now 5 minutes is not uncommon. You can watch the oil temps cycle up and down with the fan running. The PCM must have a fairly broad set point for the on
ff action. In an attempt to keep the water flow intact (which essentially bypasses the radiator being T'd into the heat circuit below the heater control valve) and unload some of the excess coolant btu's AND keep the oil temp lower, I installed a Hayden tube fin oil cooler that I bought on Ebay a few years ago. I'm unsure of its efficiency, but it's plenty big (about 24x12). This resulted in no real difference in idle oil or coolant temps but did maintain highway oil temps @ 175F+/-. So, high speed control appeared to have been achieved.
I was about to install my Permacool oil thermostat to cut out the Hayden until the oil had reached higher temps (according to Permacool this modulates at around 180F) when I got a revelation. If I plug both outlet ports of the oil thermostat and run it in line with the outlet coolant line to the exchangers, it will choke off most of the flow when it reaches 180F.
This worked, sorta. The oil thermostat indeed works as designed in this capacity. Unfortunately, I still have the long fan cycling ..but now the oil is at a much lower temperature. Instead of (at idle) watching it go from 195F to 205F and then back down to 190F (and repeat), I now see 185F as a peak ..and will even have a negative exchange rate. That is, the oil will come out of the motor @ 185F and return @ 180F (+/- a few ticks). This shows that the coolant must be below 180F at that point in the engine.
My next installation is an addition oil thermostat where I had intended it to be ..taking the Hayden out of the equation until the oil warms to 180F. The other side effect of this coolant flow adjustment is that highway speeds can drive the oil temp below 160F ..which kinda overshoots the target of making this 10 weight oil appear like a 20 weight at operating temp.
I'll also be replacing the OEM sender (OBDI = sensor and sender) with a digital thermal couple and add that reading to my dash so I can get a grip on what the sensor is seeing to run the fan.
My next step on attempting to choke the flow a bit more may be to reduce the current 5/8" lines to 1/2" or even to 3/8". This, naturally, adds more clamps and nylon reducers. I had considered seeing if I could find a TCS vacuum switch of the right range and have it automatically close a vacuum controled valve ..but that's more research than I want to get into.
This is one cobbled together setup ..but we're getting there.
Once everything is setup I'll run a baseline warm up time. Before I put in the thermostat choke ..it would stabilize in about 10 miles (9 of that being highway @ 60-65 mph - or about 10 minutes from turning the key). After this new benchmark, I'll install dual big filters after the oil thermostat ..but before the Hayden cooler. This should show if a 10+ quart sump can warm as fast as a 6,5 quart sump (it appears that the Eaton exchangers and the Hayden cache about a quart and a half of oil).
I want to do a UOA on the current fill ..but with so many new/used parts (the new Hayden is copper and I'm using used 80's Crown Vic 351 police package lines) and the number of times I've tinkered with the hoses and fittings, I'm uncertain if anything would be gleaned from it at this time. I believe that I'll do a change out when I add the big filters ..at which time I'll do a few hundred mile "in engine VOA" and then follow up with a 3k UOA to see what's up.
I'll snap some pic's of the current setup and post them in a few hours. The octopus is getting wild.
