Reply to "How should I be driving my engine?"

Mike, Roger once had an oil cooler on the car, but it came with a check-valve that had plastic guts to keep the system full. One day he ran the car hard and the check valve melted! This plugged about 80% of the oil flow; he came home at 1500 rpms, took the stuff off and threw it all in the trash!

If you'd like to experiment, I recommend Laminova or Fluidyne water-to-oil heat exchangers rather than air-to-oil coolers. Reason is, air-to-oil needs a big duct chopped into the bodywork somewhere and its easy to locate the duct in a dead-air area on these cars, or uglify their styling. Water-to-oil works no matter where you put them, and the Laminova is take-apart-cleanable. Fluidyne is all welded & cannot be cleaned if you pop a motor. Mocal & others sell a compact oil thermostat that can be plumbed in to keep from overcooling oil and also to aid warm-up.

No street Pantera needs an oil cooler unless you regularly run at redline in 5th gear for more than a couple of minutes. It took me 5 full minutes at 160 mph in 5th to bring the oil temp much above the water temp for a baseline run in our Pantera. Then as an experiment I installed Laminova's small tubular heat exchanger that is stock on late Ford police cars and taxicabs, also heavy trucks. It pulls about 7-15F degrees out of the oil and applies it to the coolant. I also added an oil thermostat from Pegasus Auto Racing in WI. No worries about overloading coolant temps because you already have a big radiator.

BTW, Roger & his builder both wrenched on winged dirt-track sprinters, not wimpy NASCARs! I'm told there's nothing in the world like 900 bhp in a 1300 lb car with only 3 brakes & 4 different sized tires!