adding an oil cooler to my IDI, questions.

[Lonesome7.3]

I never heard of an oil T-stat. That is pretty cool. Expensive, but cool. I have a lock clutch as well for my power Stroke (if I ever get around to finishing it.) I agree with you on a mechanical fan moving more air. And if this truck had a slush box, I would not consider it. But I figured with a five speed it might work out. Honestly, I have no idea. I have never installed an electric fan on a diesel.

 

[jaluhn83]

So thinking about this over the weekend (lots of time driving) I think that the best approach for an add on oil cooler is to use a separate cooling circuit completely - use a heat exchanger of some sort to transfer heat from the oil to a separate coolant circuit which then dump heat in it's own radiator. It's simple, easy to control and does not add any potential for catastrophic failure. The radiator could be adapted from a trans cooler or use a custom one - frozenboost has a 12x12 & 12x24 for air to water intercooler use that would work well. They also sell a 12v marine bilge pump that would work well for circulating water. To really do it right you would want a finned cooler or sandwich cooler for the oil to water heat exchanger, but I think you could get a pretty good amount of heat transfer by simply taking some copper tubing, flattening it some and clamping/brazing it to the outside of the oil sump - I think if you got decent coverage (bend the pipe into a serpentine) of the bottom 6" of so of the 2 sides of the oil sump you'd probably get quite good cooling. It would be fairly easy I think to fab up a clamp plate on both sides too using the oil pan bolts at the top and a tie rod and the bottom so you wouldn't need to do any actual modifications of the pan. The same approach can be used for a manual trans/t-case/rear axle cooler as well - probably even use one common pump and radiator. Coincidentally, one of the surplus catalogs I was looking at recently has a controller that would be perfect for this, or for any other temperature control application. http://www.mpja.com/Digital-Temperature-Controller-FAHRENHEIT/productinfo/32764+MP/

 

[Lonesome7.3]

That sounds like a fund project. I especially like the digital controller.