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This is the second and hopefully final planning post about oil cooler placement. Speaking of which, I am starting to get back into planning posts recently after talking with my good friend and fellow anal-retentive track car builder, Rich (of V8Mongrel infamy). He was goading me into creating more web content, and the conversation progressed to cover the benefits of planning posts. In general, they’re a great way to capture your perspective at the time of posting which is good for sake of posterity, but also for showing others your “thought path” and how you arrived at some key decisions. In the specific case of the oil cooler placement, others are able to use the same inputs I did as they are chassis/engine independent. Onto the fun part…

After attaching the CF duct to the oil cooler, it appears that the oil cooler will not fit behind the passenger headlight. I thought this would be the case in the last installment and have now confirmed it. The only alternative at this point is tucked in the bumper cover just forward of the front passenger wheel, mirrored placement to the OE Side-Mount Intercooler (SMIC). There are a few concerns with this approach:

1. Vulnerability to foreign object damage (FOD) as it’s much closer to the racing surface than with my previous idea, and not protected at all. This can be solved by utilizing a full underpanel that extends from the front fascia to just forward of the front wheels. Another option that requires much less work is to simply do a smaller underpanel for the specific purpose of protecting the cooler/duct.
2. Placement below the engine block outlet puts it at the lowest point in the oiling system. This is mainly an issue for draining, but doesn’t concern me as long as I don’t have a lot of debris buildup. A good friend and former Enjuku employee, Estevan, mentioned that this is mainly a concern if you shred the motor and have an expensive oil cooler. Seeing as how the cooler was $30 used from another friend Rich and can be purchased new for somewhere around $50, I’m not altogether worried about this one.
3. Oil lines will need to be a little longer to accommodate this placement. I will be using BMRS line with a low coefficient of friction because of its PTFE inner liner, and a good portion of the cost is in the fitting. Meaning that a few extra feet won’t hurt the wallet much either.

Airflow is almost a non-issue with this placement and the CF duct. After the cooler is mounted, I simply have to run hose from each of the two 3″ duct inlets to the bumper cover. The preliminary (and rather crude) method will be simply squeezing the hose to fit the factory holes. A later, much cleaner, and more efficient setup will happen when I have the resources and time to create fiberglass pieces. Unfortunately I have not found any aftermarket parts that fit, including some plastic NACA ducts purchased from RacerPartsWholesale. I will add pictures to illustrate this point when I get around to mounting the cooler and worrying about hose addition.

The plan for now is to find some stainless mesh to cover the oil cooler duct inlets, to be held in place with the hose and some form of fastening like wormgear clamps or zipties.

The only problem with using the two openings on the bumper cover is that I will not have an easy place to pull air from when doing brake ducting down the road. The simple solution is to cut a duct into the bumper cover and possibly use one of the NACA ducts I purchased. But we’ll cross that bridge when we get to it.

I had a great time at this event. Jimmy, a fraternity brother and close friend, came down for the weekend to hang out and take video. So instead of the usual in-car footage, I have external video of a few of my runs. I’ve found that I enjoy it much more, as in-car autocross footage isn’t nearly as cool as the same from track events. Maybe because it’s easier to see the course in track footage, plus there are people passing and getting passed. In autocross, you have neither of these things. And in watching footage from other people’s autocross runs, I rarely get a good feel for course was layout. At any rate, I hope to have the footage posted soon on Google Video.

I managed to get 12-15 runs in, but wasn’t keeping count so it may have been as few as 10. Either way, it was good experience despite the fact that I couldn’t seem to get past the 55-second mark. I convinced one of the good local guys to ride with me and he said that aside from going a bit wider to take some sharp turns (also called “attacking the back”), I couldn’t do much more on street tires. While this was comforting, I almost felt cheated. I was hoping he would point out a few things I could change, so I would have something to strive for in the remainder of my runs. It also sucked because it made me feel like I have to use r-comps to be more successful. Not that I care about winning any autocrosses mind you, but I don’t like getting pwned on raw time by everyone save the bottom 10%. And while r-comps would be nice for track use too, I have plenty of life in the Hankooks and no spare set of wheels to mount r-comps on. So for now, I’m sticking with what I have.

The car did pretty well, despite oversteering a lot. In most cases, this was good because it allowed me to point the car in the right direction. This was especially helpful considering I deleted PS and how have a smaller wheel that makes tight autocross turns hard on the forearms. This “problem” also makes for a funnerar driving experience when you come out of a turn counter-steering.

All in all I had a great time driving and hanging out with Yims. The event would have been cooler though if anyone from CarolinaNissans actually shown up. Not that I’m surprised, but it continues to frustrate me that I spend so much time and have so many friends on a board where very few people actually care about motorsports other than drifting. A few of the guys, probably my closer friends, have either roadraced, are building cars for it, or want to try it. Everyone else, it seems, is content to never try autocross. I would cite money as the issue, but entry fees aren’t that much. If anything, I think it’s the safety requirements that scare people away, especially since 240 owners are notorious for not securing the battery properly. But any person whose car is safe for street use should be OK for autocross, right?I think the main reason behind poor attendance in general is that there’s usually a drift event happening. While I would likely have lots of fun at said events, they’re not as close as CCR autocrosses. More importantly, they eat the hell outta your tires. And seeing as how my budget isn’t unlimited, I would like to keep as much meat as I can. I’ve considered putting the stock wheels back on, but the tires are mismatched and at least one of them doesn’t hold air, so either option would require an outlay of money that I’m unwilling to make. Speaking of which, that must be why driftkidz are always poor.

The more I think about it, the more I want to put the IC in front of the radiator as my friend Casey and so many others have. For track use, it would make me feel a lot better to have an expensive IC core further from the ground. The implication though is that the “cold pipe” section would interfere with the placement of the oil cooler, making it virtually impossible to mount it where I decided last, which is behind the passenger headlight where the battery is from the factory.

One benefit here is that I no longer have to worry about putting a check valve on the oil filter canister inlet as mentioned in the previous post. Aside from the fact that ducting will be different, there’s no real change in difficulty. I plan on using, and have purchased, a carbon fiber duct to mate with the cooler. It’s a used NASCAR part that perfectly fits the cooler, and has two 3″ inlets…like I said: PERFECT! Not too shabby at $60 either.

The plan for now is to locate the cooler once I get the inlet duct, based on sheer size and hose routing. The only downside I can see at this point is increased difficulty in getting brake ducting in place.

After switching formats over the WordPress, the page with this information was dropped. Unfortunately, I haven’t had the time or diligence to take care of it, largely because I didn’t know until today that I could upload files. D-oh!

In case you haven’t seen the earlier HTML version of this, it is essentially a record of the things that I’ve stripped out of the car and weighed. Recently, I decided to add back for parts where something was removed and something else added back in its place. For example: although I weighed the stock seats w/sliders when I was gutting the car several years ago, I didn’t include them on the list because it’s not really a savings. I purchased some Sparco seats, will weigh them (and the stockers again), then include each as a line item so you can see how much was saved.

Enjoy!

S13 Weight Savings Guide

I had a friend on CarolinaNissans mention that I need to add a check valve on the inlet to make sure oil doesn’t drain back into the block and leave the filter “unfilled.” I somewhat understood this, but dismissed it because I wasn’t sure about how valid it was, if it was even applicable in my case, and frankly hadn’t gotten that far in the process.

After some digging and asking around, I found the following quote from the Wix site:

Anti-drain back valve in the spin-on filter
Generally, the anti-drain back valve have the form of a rubber membrane adjoining the inner side of the can type filter cover. The membrane covers the holes where the contaminated oil gets through to the filter and protects from the back flow after the engine stops. The anti-drain back valve reduces the dry friction or mitigated solid friction time between working parts of the engine as protecting from the oil flow towards the pump and accelerates the oil flow into the working elements during the engine start, especially after a long break. The position the filter is screwed into the engine, conditions the valve application. If the filter works in the “cover up” position as shown in the picture below, the function of the valve is taken successfully by the gravitation. A valve is required when the filter is screwed in from the side or from the top of the engine body.

My filter is not a spin-on type, but I think the concept is still applicable since my filter will be mounted higher than the take-off from the block. I spoke with one of the great guys at BAT (British American Transfer) Inc., and he told me the best option is a mil-spec, flapper-type check valve. Not bad, except it adds leak points and costs ~$90. On the the plus side, they come with integrated -AN fittings which makes things a TON easier.

I finally made a decision about the filter and went with the 6″ tall CM remote canister, P/N 1281 from Pegasus Auto Racing Supplies. I ordered a set of two -12 o-ring to -10 male adapters and an extra clamp to make sure it stays in place. It’s scheduled to arrive next week, and I’ll post some pictures when it does.

Next up: mounting everything!

I came across a Canton/Mecca (CM) oil filter housing earlier in my search, when looking for a similar setup to the M3 filter canister. I dismissed it at the time in favor of the billet filter mount (P/N 22-625), which I later came to realize was overkill when I could use a forged one (Mocal RFH1B). Most people use cast, but I’m not a huge fan of cast aluminum when other options are available for a little bit more money.

I posted a question on SR20Forum about the inline filter as mentioned earlier, and had a friend mention the CM unit. I started to look deeper into it, and it can filter down to 8-micron particles and i supposed to maintain flow every well even after capturing matter. They recommend changing the element every 10,000 street miles, which is probably about a season of autocross and a few HPDE’s. I would have to play with it some to figure out the change frequency.

A friend pointed me to a used race parts website the other day since he knew I was looking for oil cooler parts, and I saw a Peterson inline oil filter for sale. Curious about what this was, particularly since I haven’t heard much about them, I dug deeper by visiting Peterson’s filter page. Wow, what a piece of race-bling! Upon giving it comes thought, I came up with a Pro/Con list:

Pros
1) Cheaper in the long run since I don’t have to keep replacing spin-on filters
2) Less pressure drop across the filter (good for stock oil pump)
3) Larger filtration area (19.63 in² for K&N HP-1003 and 32.99 in² for Peterson 09-0461); this could be partially solved by using a larger spin-on filter with a remote mount
4) Fewer fittings, thus fewer potential leak points than a standard remote mount with female 1/2″ NPT fittings and -AN adapters threaded in

Cons
A) More of a pain to clean the element than replace a spin-on
B) May need to clean after every track weekend to ensure clogging doesn’t occur
C) Filtration isn’t as good (K&N lists “10-20 micron” for the filter and the Peterson uses a 60-micron element)

I spoke with Kevin at Peterson and he sold me on these things. I am unclear on one point though: which is better at filtration? He mentioned that the Peterson filters are more consistent in their filtration as they use a stainless steel mesh versus the coated paper of the spin-ons. But with the filtration down to “10-20 microns” versus the 60 from Peterson, wouldn’t that mean that the K&N effectively cleared out more crap?

I spoke with a friend I met on FreshAlloy who I call a few times a year, and he seems to like the idea. He mentioned using these on some shop drift cars, but mentioned the lack of bypass with the units they employed. As it happens, Peterson offers their 400-series with an internal bypass. According to Kevin, it uses a 10-ish pound spring that uses pressure differential to route fluid around the filter element. This is good for cooler oil that is at a higher pressure before it warms up, or in case the filter element clogs. Sounds like a good option to me. Despite the fact that there is a brief period of time the oil isn’t being filtered, it provides more protection to the engine than the non-bypass version.

Pros and cons aside, the inline filter would be a nice piece in the engine bay, and the Pros currently outweigh the Cons. The ability to have fewer fluid connections has me leaning heavily toward the inline filter now, but I am waiting for a few more “experts” to chime in.

I have been back and forth on various elements of the oil cooler based on who I talk to. Mike Kojima (of Sport Compact Car magazine fame) uses a Setrab in his turbo B-15 Spec-V racecar, but some trusted friends on another board recommend bar & plate (the Setrabs are tube & fin) as they’re more durable. Considering the amount of debris that can be thrown up on track, particularly when someone offs, this should be a consideration.

The same trusted friends have noted that bar & plate are more efficient, but I have heard contradicting beliefs. I have yet to look at thermal efficiency numbers for the two coolers I’m considering, but I’m not sure it matters unless I really need to know. And as long as the thing cools the oil, it’s “cool,” right?

Either way, the thing will be ducted on both the “in” and “out” sides, as it’s been made abundantly clear by all parties that this is the best way to effectively utilize an oil cooler. So the plan is to continue with 1/16″ (0.063″) aluminum, alloy 5086. In case you’re curious, this is named “Machinable Marine-Grade” by McMaster-Carr, and the properties can be found here. I’ve used pieces of this for the sunroof delete and driver’s door skinning, and it works well. It should be plenty for ducting too, as confirmed by Kojima. I ordered McMaster P/N 5865T14 (24″x48″) for $58 before, but shipping makes this an even pricier endeavor. I considered ordering the 48″x48″ sheet (P/N 5865T15) at $110, but it would have to be sent truck freight. A local supplier my dad does business with can get a sheet of 0.080″ 48″x96″ with free delivery. This is a much better deal since I don’t have to worry about freight and effectively get twice the size, slightly thicker material (this is good), for 14% less. Factoring in shipping makes it an even better deal.