When I installed my Vortech V1, I also installed an oil cooler. It seemed like a smart thing to do at the time, although I wasn't planning on flogging the car that much.

In short: don't.

The puny oil pump in the VQ30 can't really keep up with both a blower AND the oil cooler, and although I didn't know it, I was always having some issues with oil pressure. It came to a head and I needed to get the blower rebuilt.

After installing the new, rebuilt V1, the car still had oil pressure issues. I finally removed it today and, what do you know, the V1 runs four times quieter than before. It is truly a night and day difference.

Be advised.

 

how about installing a rev up oil pump....that way you can keep your oil cooler

 

How is your cooler tied in, off the oil pressure sender or a sandwich style adaptor at the filter ?

Cause I think the stock pump should keep but im no expert.

 

 

I thought so too, but it did not. It's a sandwich style tie in at the filter, and all the tubing was sufficient.

A rev-up pump would have worked, but I don't track the car so having the cooler on there was pretty pointless in the first place.

One of those "don't install it unless you need it moments."

 

well im glad you posted cause I plan on installing my v2 this winter . And a oil cooler was on my list of things to do . Guess ill just monitor the temp and see what happens without it .

 

I was about to install one as well in the same fashion you did. On a side note I'm concerned the SC isn't getting enough oil at idle after looking at the sc rebuild thread.

 

Question for you,

How long was your feed to the oil cooler/the supercharger? Not sure if you noted but was there a pressure drop? I was planning to route from oil sandwich >oil cooler > supercharger, but that would leave me with around 4+ ft of feed line causing a drop i presume.

Is there an effective way to utilize an oil cooler with our setups, such as mounting in a different location?

 

That routing method might be better, or maybe put a tee in the supply line to the oil cooler. Or increase the size of the supply line to the blower.

Cause putting a revup oil pump sounds like a lot of work unless maybe someone already had the motor pulled.

 

Funny, streets and i have an oil feed line going all the way to the rear of the car and he has a HUGE oil cooler with no
problems.

I too plan on adding a 19row oil cooler.




Question, what kind of oil cooler did you buy? I have seen many tranny coolers advertised as oil coolers and they will NOT work(they can't keep the pressure)

 

The feed and return were probably 2 1/2 feed. I had it mounted in front of the radiator.

I have no idea what brand it was, but it was for sure an oil cooler and not a tranny cooler.

I agree that, while the pressure was probably good enough for the engine, it was starving the V1 for oil. I had to rebuild it after 5000 miles.

 

This may be a dumb question but I have to ask. Did you use enough oil to compensate for the added lines+cooler?

 

That is what i am debating on putting on. I picked up the nice Setrab 19 row for my V2 setup, but am thinking of where would be the best location, and if i should try and use larger feed lines, or just more oil.

 

Yep. I was filling up with a little over 6 quarts.

 

Do you have an oil pressure gauge to backup your theory? How do you know there was oil pressure issues?

I find it hard to believe that the oil pump was having trouble keeping up with both SC and cooler. Like kevlo said, we have more than 10feet of oil feed line (4an) to the turbo, in addition we have oil cooler. The only time I see my oil pressure dancing around and low is when I change the oil and its starting to fill up all the lines and cooler. after that oil pressure jumps up to its normal level.

 

NousDefions please post pics of the parts used, box they came in, etc. if you can.

 

How are you monitoring your oil pressure? Where did you mount everything?

 

There shouldn't be a drop in the pressure, if there is enough oil and if he use the right size hose. Maybe the tubing is too big, otherwsie there should be very minimal loses in pressure. Like someone said hook-up an oil pressure gauge and start from there. Another issue might be the oil pump going south.

 

I used a sandwhich plate on the oil filter. This means you werent monitoring your oil pressure? I doubt there was ever an oil pressure issue with your car.

 

Use a thermostat so oil isnt always going through the cooler from start up.
Use appropriate lines and a Setrab or similar oil cooler. Make sure it is an oil cooler and not other fluid cooler.

Also instead of 4.5 use full 5qt. with SC and cooler. and then measure once car has been warmed up to the point where fore mentioned t-stat opens and fills the cooler with oil. that way you can get a clear idea of how much oil you need.

 

How do you install an oil thermostat?

Which Setrab oil cooler would you recommend? They make 10, 16, 19 and 34 row coolers. I have a feeling a 10 row would be sufficient for NA cars....but what do I know?

 

You dont want to be overcooling the oil, the tstat will prevent oil from being cooled when below X temperature. It is important to run the car at normal operating temperatures.

 

I'm trying to decide between two oil cooler kits and could use your opinions.

First up is the Perma-Cool kit for 250 HP $162
Perma-Cool kit

And since I live in Maryland I should get a thermostat to go along with it. ~$60
Perma-Cool thermostat

Or there is the kit from Racer Parts Wholesale for $250
RPW kit

Which if I'm not mistaken includes this adapter with built-in thermostat:
Sandwich plate w/thermostat

And it also comes with SS lines as opposed to the rubber lines in the Perma-Cool kit.

I'm also interested in monitoring oil temperature, but neither kit comes with the parts to do so. It sounds like you just need to put a sensor in line somewhere, but I don't have any pictures of anyone's setup with one installed.

Here are some pics of people's oil coolers

Ptatohed's Perma-Cool kit


Jay25's kit (not sure of make)


And streetzlegend's kit (not sure of make)


The thing that worries me is clearance to the crankshaft pulley and the passenger wheel when turned left. Joe (98SEBlackMax) told me that he bought a kit from RPW, but needed a spacer to push out the sandwich plate as the lines were too close to the crank pulley, but this pushed the oil filter very close to the wheel, and he thought that any wheel smaller than 17" would hit the filter. The Perma-Cool kit looks like it can be mounted in such a way to avoid this problem, but I'm not sure if there's a way to get around it using the RPW kit.

So what are your thoughts on Perma-Cool vs. RPW? And what about an oil temp gauge/sensor?

 

you see the blue sandwhich plate behind the silver one, you can put an oil temp there. I have a pressure sending unit and turbo feed line from there. So you can def use a oil temp sending unit. You will not have issues with filter being close to wheel.

 

nick do you road course your car or just autoX? I'd be interested to know what sort of oil temps you see on a road course if you ever get the chance.

I saw about 275F peak on the road course, no cooler.

 

Mostly just auto-x, but if I get the chance this year I will get this thing on a real track.

How do you monitor your oil temp without a cooler? I'm still not sure what the best device is to monitor temperature.

 

Forgot to post, they have been sitting on photobucket since 2010. Funny that I have yet to post these as I was proud of this fabrication work.











This is the higher end universal RPW kit with the thermostat oil sandwich plate and another cheapie oil filter sandwich plate that houses an oil pressure sensor. Looking to install the sensors and gauges sometime this year before the new track season. Anyways it has alot of quality parts with the -8 AN hose and fittings. But as you can see it barely fits...

The 2nd plate was needed as the RPW plate; for its high cost the RPW plate has no holes for any pressure sensors. That and those thick -8 AN fittings came so close to the crank pulley with just the RPW plate, a second plate was needed. Maybe if you had different smaller fittings that put the hose further away you could get away with a single sandwich plate.

In the third pic you can see where the oil filter goes inside the 17 x 9 rim. I tested all the different wheels I had at full lock to lock with compression and droop, somehow this setup fits and nothing rubs.

The whole setup holds around 6 quarts of oil and hasn't had any low pressure problems or leaks since I installed it. There might be some issues with some future projects but I will cross that bridge when I get there.

I also removed the factory power steering cooler and converted to a Summit Racing universal ps cooler. When running sticky tires on the road course my power steering would boil over on the hotter days, the fluid is fine now after a couple of road course events.

 

i have a plx SM-FluidTemp module and it displays on my PLX DM100 gauge (along with coolant temp and AFR). the probe is submerged in the oil pan.

 

Alot of hardware there, great looking work, clean.

 

Yay! I was hoping you would post up!

By higher end do you mean the kit with the 48 row cooler (that adds $25)?
Kit
And that kit comes with this included, right?
Sandwich w/thermostat

However, this kit says it comes with -10 lines but you said you have -8. Did you buy smaller lines on purpose? Is that third pic of the wheel at full lock? And how much clearance is there between the oil filter and wheel?

Do you have any better pics of the sandwich w/pressure sensor? Are you monitoring temperature? Are you monitoring pressure because of the added volume?

Is this pretty much what you got for a PS cooler?
PS cooler

I didn't even realize we had a PS cooler from the factory.....

 

Yeah they were -10AN lines. I forgot, it was a long time ago.

I used the regular kit with the 24 row cooler and metric oil filter sandwich plate.

It was hard to photograph the wheel at full lock so I took what pics with what I could.

About a week after installing it I drove to Calabogie, Canada and got on the road course with this setup without any problems.

I will need to get gauges for the temp and pressure. I will monitor pressure thru the 2nd sandwich plate and monitor temp probably from the oil pan drain plug via an adaptor.

Yeah it was around $40 for the PS cooler, nothing special. That kit you posted looks about the same to me. Some Maximas have a metal tube in front that loops around once to act as a cheap PS cooler. I don't know which cars have it, I think it depends on the year and if the car is a SE, GXE, or GLE.

 

i have always been under the impression that all 4th gens have the PS cooler.

 

I've seen one '99 with just a rubber loop. It was an SE-L which I thought was weird.

As far as weight goes this oil and PS cooler setup, the two extra quarts of oil, battery relocation to the trunk, and adding a '95 fed spec EVAP canister the car only picked up around 8 pounds. Though I did some various bits of weight reduction and did remove the stock battery tray, so that helped keep the overall weight gain down.

 

Nice setup Joe would something like this work on my 5.5 gen?

 

The VQ35s already have an oil cooler from the factory using coolant running to and from the oil filter, so this would be overkill on your car. Only needed on cars that see alot of track days or have serious forced induction setups.

 

Do you remember where you bought your pressure sandwich plate from? I don't see anything on RPW. What are you using to block off the ports that you're not using yet?

So does everybody monitor oil temp from the pan? I've read that it's more accurate to read it from somewhere in the V of the block, but I can only image how much extra work that would be to rig up.

 

http://www.glowshiftdirect.com/Oil-F...-Adapters.aspx

I got it from that website, didn't think it would work being some cheap adaptor plate but it doesn't leak and has the fitting holes for the pressure sensors. I went down to a local hardware store and got pipe fitting plugs to put in the sensor holes with teflon tape wrapped on the treads until I get the oil pressure sensor installed.

As far as getting accurate readings all these gauges and where the sensors are installed give relative measurements IMO. Once they are installed on a known healthy engine you have nominal readings and at the track if anything goes out of that range you know there could be a problem.

 

I'm curious how you would know if you had low pressure problems without a gauge? And would the low pressure be caused by the extra volume being more difficult to move around for the oil pump? What sort of future projects could cause problems for oil pressure?

Oil and PS coolers ordered, thanks for the help Joe!!