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Date:         Tue, 19 Jul 2011 23:00:32 -0700
Reply-To:     Scott Daniel - Turbovans <scottdaniel@TURBOVANS.COM>
Sender:       Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From:         Scott Daniel - Turbovans <scottdaniel@TURBOVANS.COM>
Subject:      Re: Watching Oil Temp (long, as usual)
Comments: To: Rocket J Squirrel <camping.elliott@GMAIL.COM>
Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed; charset="utf-8"; reply-type=original

re So on the waterboxer, where is the oil picking up the extra heat that shows on the oil temp gauge but not the coolant gauge when the engine is under demand?

here's how I would look at it. the cooling system has a very large reserve cooling capacity. It is going to be kept down to the regulated temp most of the time. so big cooler on the coolant.

the oil does not have a huge cooler on it. If it did ....it could be kept down to regulated temp more easily.

where and how the heat of combustion gets to the oil .. the whole thing is metal that conducts heat. I suppose oil gets quite hot near the exhaust valve guides.. but that's only a tiny bit of the oil of course .. the oil is in constant contact with a large metal thing ( the engine ) ..it picks up heat from the whole thing.

and naturally .. oil temp will track coolant temp. if coolant temp is regulated to say 180F .. at first oil will be ambient temp ..say 70 degrees on a nice day. As time goes by .. since the oil is in a large lump of metal running at 180 F ...naturally , it will get to 180 F after a while.

nothing complicated about that. I cold temps ..it might take a long time to get up to coolant temp. in really cold temps it might not ever get up to coolant temp .. but generally .. in warm and normal temps .. oil temp will arrive at coolant temp after a while. and then .. since it does not have a large dedicated cooler .. it will climb above coolant temp after a while usually. In severe climbs and big loads and high temps.. with no cooler at all.. it can get to 250 F easily. Even higher . 'cooler' by itself is not necessarily better in oil temp. you want it around coolant temp or a bit higher.

'up to 250 F' I would regard as acceptable. if it runs around say 225 fully warmed up . I'd call that perfect.

who cares where in the engine the oil picks up heat the most..which exact spots or places.. all that matters is it picks up heat from the engine .. as it should.

overthinking it I am tempted to comment. of course.. the hottest part of an engine is around the heads and combustion chamber. that's only logical. think how hot the exhaust valves run.. that's in the many hundreds of degrees F.

aluminum, as in pistons ..starts to melt at 1190 F ....close to 1200 F , somewhere in there. Next you'll be having an EGT gauge and wondering about that temp. .. though EGT gauges are not usually run on a non-turbo gasoline engine.

yeah.. it runs hottest where the exhaust comes out .. should be able to related to that !! the exhaust valves go through hell. It's amazing how well they last.. and how well the exhaust valve guides hold up. the temps there are pretty extreme, for fairly ordinary metal. next step up in exhaust valves is 'sodium filled' .. they have sodium in them to aid heat dissipation.

hey ! ..you could be a thermodynamics engineer/geek !

glad you are having so much fun with your vanagon ! Scott

----- Original Message ----- From: "Rocket J Squirrel" <camping.elliott@GMAIL.COM> To: <vanagon@GERRY.VANAGON.COM> Sent: Tuesday, July 19, 2011 3:56 PM Subject: Re: Watching Oil Temp (long, as usual)

> On Tue, 2011-07-19 at 13:14 -0400, Edward Maglott wrote: > >> I'm pretty sure the coolant flows through the heads and that is where it >> picks up most of the engine heat. > > > Oh -- okay. The only heads I've ever held were from an aircooled. They > had no plumbing for coolant. > > So on the waterboxer, where is the oil picking up the extra heat that > shows on the oil temp gauge but not the coolant gauge when the engine is > under demand? > > -- RJS > > sent from my old aircooled heads


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