What about a hot climate area. Would that warrant the need for one?

 

I live in FL and I drive/drove my car pretty hard, as long as your not running something like 5w30 then you should be fine. I dont run run anything less than 10w30 and when my motor is done I will probly run mobil 15w50 b/c the will only be driven on the weekend and when I go to the track.....so pretty much anytime I drive it it will be driven hard.

 

Is there a possibility that this is what's causing my low oil pressure after a cam swap? It's around 22 at cold idle and 5-10 at hot idle.

 

The cooler should have not made a difference in pressure, if you did nothing to it during the swap. They do have a tendency to get clogged, though.

 

I unplugged the lines and that was all, but I can't say that absolutely no gasket material got in there. How much work is it to remove?

 

Ehh, one more thing to point out about running an aftermarket oil cooler.

Your oil does close to 50% of the total cooling of your engine. The antifreeze does the rest. That said, anything that can lower your oil temp, helps keep operating temps down.

And the cooler oil stays, the longer it will last. It just is an all around win-win situation. A very well-worth $100 mod. My temp gauge definatly stayed lower than before I had it. And I am only running a fairly small oil cooler, in a cooler area ( Pittsburgh PA ).

I never had any problems with pressure, 20+ psi HOT idle.

 

LT1 Corvettes never came with them. Run synthetic oil like the 'Vettes and it'll be fine without it.

-Chris

 

Unplugging the lines would do nothing towards helping your oil pressure. The problem causing the oil pressure to be lower is the physical metal part of the "cooler" that sits in between the block and fliter. The oil has to run through it and over time it can get gummy and clogged.

I'm not quite sure my oil pressure actually increased, but I definitely noticed a difference in the gauge response, it was MUCH quicker and more reactive. If I remember correctly the pressure did seem a little higher at warm temps, but that could have been just my imagination!

 

yeah i have an oil cooler in my 97 ss, came with it, but i have not had any problems with mine either, oil pressure stays the same, and i'm at 72k right now. just took it off last night while i was taking apart my engine, and its clean as a whistle inside

if i were to take it off..what would i do about the two stud looking things up in there, that see like they would get in the way of screwing a filter on??

 

Here's a good thread on this subject; read about the difference in design of the early oil coolers, versus the 1995+

http://web.camaross.com/forums/showt...ght=oil+cooler

 

My 97SS came with one as an option. My motor spun with less than 7 grand on the clock after I had a cam installed. Since I don't know why my motor went to hell, but did find metal shavings in the cooler, I opted not to have one installed on my new short block. Take it for what it is worth.JMHO

 

Not all of them came with them. Mine didn't.

 

Corvettes have been using Mobil 1 5W30 synthetic oil as the factory fill since 1992. According to Dave Mclellan, the Corvette’s second chief engineer, “The most important reason was that the LT1 engine needed an oil cooler for certain high thermal stress situations. We were concerned that the external oil cooler plumbing, which ran near the exhaust manifold, was vulnerable to manifold heat. Tests with Mobil 1 showed that the engine ran cool enough that an external oil cooler was not even needed".

taken from article--http://www.royalpurple.no/mobil1.pdf