Good point about 'is the oil cooler is pre or post- filter'. I think the pipe stub through the center is the return, and the outside surface of the filter element is the dirty side. That would make the cooler 'pre-filter'. So, I guess if you have dirty/chunky oil and engine internals, cooler plugging would be more likely and ditching it is more adviseable.

My engine was very clean inside at teardown. I ran dyno oil for first 20k or so then Mobil 1 until the teardown at 80k+.

 

I don't see how the coolant could bring oil temps up faster. Oil warms up quite fast compared to the coolant on a cold day.

I ran Mobil 1 since week one on my engine. Changed every 4500mi. I pulled the cooler off at 32,000 miles and it had carbon chunks and metal shavings trapped. I think the metal shavings were from a crane gold rocker that had spit out a bearing and rode bare back on the trunion. The fact that these things didn't make it into the filter were quite disturbing.

 

Point taken about the debris. I can't argue with that. But carbon chunks, I wonder where that came from. Could it have been sealer chunks?

In my experience, during cold ambient operation when cold/thick oil is an issue, the oil does not come up to temperature as fast or as far as coolant unless you are running unusually high revs and low load. I've never tested it on an LT1, but I have on L4s and V6s on a dyno in a cold climate chamber, and the oil temp is lower for the whole test.

 

Having both a coolant temp gauge and and oil temp gauge, my experience is that the coolant warms up much faster than the oil.

 

JP95ZM6, I assumed that your statement " I like the fact that it helps get the oil up to temperature faster in cool weather." was in reference to the first few minutes after start up. I apologize for the assumption.

OBE1 95Z28, This -'Having both a coolant temp gauge and and oil temp gauge, my experience is that the coolant warms up much faster than the oil.'- I can't argue with

I think this begs the queston "when is multigrade oil considered warm"

An oil temp of 200F is considered the zone of max efficency and protection.
160-220F is considered as operational temperture under normal use.
Above 230F is the start of breakdown.

I have no doubt that coolant will reach 160-200F quicker than oil.

My head was at the first few minutes after a cold start and how temperature effects flow, which I guess dosen't really matter with multigrades as low as 0W or 5W. In my experience oil temps can rise 20 degrees or more in the first five minutes after a cold start, which is faster than coolant temp rise in that amount of time, but it dosen't keep that pace, and by ten minutes coolant has far surpassd the oil temp.

In any case I think that the oil cooler in these cars does more bad than good. Even when it is in good working order its not very good at its job.

 

My coolant is up to operating temperature within about 5 minutes of driving. My oil temp (gauge starts at 140F) hasn't even started to move yet. In my milder temps here in San Diego, it takes approximately 15 minutes of normal driving for the oil temp to get up to 160F; the oil temp will stay at 180F at highway speeds. In bumper to bumper traffic it climbs to 220F. Road racing at Willow Springs (30 minutes of driving), I see 240F oil temps with the 94 style oil cooler.

 

On a related note, here is all you ever wanted to know about motor oil, especially cold flow.

Motor Oil by AE Haas:
http://63.240.161.99/motoroil/index.html

 

LOL: I learned everything I ever wanted to know about oil when I first joined the site 10 years ago.

 

good thinking. Im gonna start selling my spare lt1 parts on ebay! 😂