Talk Morgan Forums Morgan Sports Cars Morgan Three Wheeler & Super 3 oil cooler installation

In regards to hot oil and how it plays havoc with your oil, I went to Hayden's website to see what they offered for oil coolers... By the way, they have just about everything one could look for.

Here is what they say about oil temp and mileage. Now this is for a water cooled motor, but I'm sure the same is true for air cooled, if not more so.



On a side note, back in 2000 I built a '40 Willys Coupe streetrod with a blown 1957 Chrysler 392 hemi. I had an engine builder in Saginaw MI build it for me from my very used engine. When we got to the point of breakin, he invited me to his shop. Actually I don't think he could have kept me away. He even let me do a pull on the motor after it was broken in.

During the warm up he waited until the oil hit 180* before he would put any load on it. He was very direct about temp and said that to perform the best and protect the motor, it needed to be at least 180 and not over around 210. But he didn't say that over 180 he lost power. He ran the oil through a cooler in his dyno room and it never got over 200. I had a cooler on the Willys besides the pan holding 9 quarts of oil for added cooling.

I also ran a Masterlube pre-luber on the car. In fact if you go to Masterlube's website, you'll see my black Willys on their home page.

Masterlube

Here's a picture that shows the Masterlube on the front of my Willys with the tilt front end off.




How this works is like this. I had the 2qt system that you plumb into your oiling pressure line. With 2qt oil in the tank you then fill up the top of the tank with air pressure. In my case it was around 80 psi.

With the ignition key on, you lift up the spring loaded toggle switch to release the oil from the tank and into the motor's oiling system. When you see oil pressure on your gauge, you let go and start the motor. As soon as the motor starts you automatically start to replenish the oil depleted from the tank during the pre-lube. At some point during the motor's run time you will hit your max oil pressure, my case this would be around 80 psi. Then you would be ready to pre-lube once again. I would usually not pre-lube if I had run the motor within the last hour or so.

With this you will never start your motor dry. I believe they have 1qt thru 3qt systems. This is NOT an active oil tank that functions while running, but if you had to add oil for some reason you could lift up on the toggle switch and force oil into the system with whatever head pressure you had in the tank as an emergency type action.

The bearings in V-Twins are usually roller or needle style, not babbit like in a conventional car motor. So pre-lubing may not be as necessary as in a car motor.

Sorry for rambling again.

Then again, they are selling oil coolers so of course will also think of them as essential [cynic? me? ]

PS: I was going to say "nice Willys" but suspect that could be misconstrued!

Thanks for the oil temp chart Dan, and yes, i agree that getting the oil up to a certain temp before putting a load on it is very desirable.
The roller bearings in the air cooled motors might have a higher degree of tolerances when going through the pretty big temperature swings in an air cooled motor. The only vehicle I have owned with an air cooled roller bearing engine was the Honda 600 Sedan, 600cc twin. Amazing how that little engine could be abused and still propel that tin box to almost 80mph for long periods.
I did have a roller bearing VW engine that was built for me that had the oil cooler removed from the fan shroud so it was not dumping hot air onto the cylinders. Very good little engine.
The point being is that once you cool the oil don’t dump the hot air back onto the engine.
If there was a way to cool the oil in the tank, without forcing the engine circulation oil through it, so the tank oil was monitored by a separate circuit and then the tank oil was put through a cooler then it would have its own fail safe. Tank oil would always have the stock cooling but when needed extra cooling could be engaged.
Any thoughts?

BTW, nice Willys!

In another thread I showed my system that meets this requirement. http://www.talkmorgan.com/ubbthreads.php/topics/514368/1
When I find time I will do this rebuild.

Andy, nice find! Someone has had their thinking caps on.

Did you make that oil tank? It looks to be a beautiful job.

I did the CAD.
The CAM was made by an external company.

For the more inventive souls among us, here's an alternative to your current oil tank. I'm not sure of your existing tank size, but I did have to make adjustments to get what I thought would be worth while results.

This technology is common among automatic transmission performance guys, an oil pan with linear mounted cooling tubes.

Take a look below. The capacity is listed and if the tank is too large in diameter, maybe it could be lengthened to gain a bit more room and still hold the same amount of oil.



And for those that may be so inclined, a person could mount a 2-speed blower motor from a car heater and mount to one end of the tank so it's enclosed/sealed. Then duct the exhaust out through a 4" flex tube and with a simple diverter butterfly valve, you could have heat on for the cabin. If not wanted, leave the diverted to exhaust outside.

Just throwing out options.

After seeing the hard work in yobtaf's post above, this would seem to be child's play.

I believe that done with care, the tube could be sweat soldered into the end caps prior to welding on the outside tube and fittings. The tubes I'm figuring would be rigid .5" copper tubing. They solder very easily and are more than durable enough for the job at hand.

Very much like a watertube boiler, but letting the air cool the oil rapidly, putting on the fan is icing on the cake.

Nice idea :-)

Great idea... wonder if there is anything that can be repurposed for this? Model steam engine boiler?

For air in and out I think some faux airplane (Spitfire style?) exhaust stack(s) either side of the front boot (inlet pointing forward, exhaust out) with a suitably trimmed cut-out in the bonnet (aka hood), trunked to the oil cooler with thermostat-controlled fan... would be a good Stage 2 mod!

I had seen this idea on a plant years ago.
However, I put the idea back in the drawer because aluminium and copper have different temperature expansions. I think the many solder joints will tear.