quote:Originally posted by mike the snake:
I'm SUPER conscious about oil temps. Coming from racing Porsches, I know just enough about oil to be dangerous.
I warm the car up, idling for 4 or 5 minutes, then it doesn't see over 2000 rpm until I see oil temps above 180. Oil temps when fully warmed up are between 210-230, maybe a little higher depending on how I'm driving it.
I KNOW it is VERY bad to drive your car with cold oil.
It's funny, in my old Subaru forum, people would brag about their oil temps running at 180 after installing their oil cooler (street car) and I caught flack when I chimed in, telling them they were hurting their engines by running their oil too cold.
When I ran Porsches, I saw people remove the oil caps and find white, water conaminated oil, in AIR cooled cars, caused by what they THOUGHT were doing their cars good, by starting and running their cars once a week for a few minutes "to keep the blood flowing", all the while they were causing condensation from the fast heat-up and cool-down from what they were doing.
Oils are rated at 200-220 I think, and have to reach those temps to boil off any water that may have developed inside the engine. Most people don't know this.
I'd rather have my oil temps a little too high than a little too low.
Water boils at 212. If you dont boil it out, you will build sludge which makes a specific type of corrosive.
The rating I think is for the point at which it caries the maxim load.
The loading capacity of the oil is so broad though that it almost doesnt matter. You just dont want to cook out the aditives.
Your water temps probably will rise as you approach maximum rpm.
Showing 180 water is showing additional capacity remaining in the cooling system. Lets presume that is 250 or abouts.
On race cars even the sheet metal gets hot.