oil cooler size 1000 hp +
 

What are you guys running for oil cooler sizes for 1000-1200 hp? Right now my engines are running twin 13 plate coolers, and no oil thermostat. I feel that twin 13 plate coolers is too much, especially without an oil thermostat. What I plan to do is add, Harden oil thermostat/filter heads and run just one 13 plate cooler, and then run a 9 plate for the transmission. I run in Lake Michigan so the water is never over 78 degrees.

I think single 13 plate will be fine for the running you'll be doing. I would imagine Teague set those up for long hard distant runs or racing. I had all new 13's and 9's including covers and gaskets for my old builds that I regret selling. Makes such a clean simple set up. I think icdedppl ran 9's if recall for eng/trans and was fine.

I ordered senders and dash warning lights for oil temps and low fuel pressure senders also. Going to mount flush mount dash lights above each gauge.

I think I'm going to run 13's on the engines, and 9's for the transmissions. If the 13's don't work I can always bump up to 15's.

You will like the oil thermostat addition.

I agree. I've ran them on all of my other engines. I'm really shocked Eickert didn't rig these with them, especially with twin 13 plate coolers. I'm currently tearing down the engines to be refreshed, and it's really obvious the oil was not getting up to temp.

maybe look at Dan Olsen oil coolers but they are not plate coolers. Not 100 percent sold on the plate coolers as I have seen many get plugged up easier than the round coolers. But we had many years of very low water conditions inwhich made matters alot worse.

I think youll be fine with the single 13 plate for oil, and 8 plate for trans. Our water is much colder than say LOTO in the summer, so thats a big help.

How is it obvious the oil isn't getting hot enough? Seeing milky residue on teardown? When my boat was at your power level the pair of stock plate coolers was adequate if that helps any.

I'll post some pictures of the internals the next time I'm up where I have the engines stored. When I pulled the intakes off last week. Some of the lifter tie-bars had light surface rust on them. I'm certainly no expert in this arena, but I would think if the oil was too cool it could cause this or if the block was too cold. I know I tried running a set of engines once without thermostats, and within one hour I had milky oil under the valve covers. Oil on the dipstick looked fine. I put the thermostats back in, and problem solved. As far as the actual oil in the engines, it looks fine.

I boat in relatively clean to extremely clean water. I'm going to give the plates a chance and see how they work.

I have 2 9plate sitting around, used one year ,, for sale .

May be interested in that 9 plate cooler. How much do you want for it?

I'm curious because I wasn't getting much temp at all but I wasn't concerned because there wasn't any milky residue. I have water and oil stats that I can change out if I wanted.

Sometimes you can still have condensation or take in some water without showing the famous milkshake although that would be a good indication. Can actually cause an acid from that and can ultimately wipe out bearings. Sulfur and water mixed is was causes the acid from what I understand. Regardless cold oil temps won't burn off any condensation or deposits and also cause a lot of friction not being real efficient. Also I've seen some engines that ran low temps from no oil stats (even with) that showed signs of oil build up in the bottom of oil pan, lifter galley, under pistons, valve covers etc Premature bearing wear is probably the worst. Running in cold water can be difficult to get temps up even with oil stats. Over the years I've always had machine shop end up on the high side with bearing clearances do to typically running lower oil temps because of 80 % of my boating is cruising rpms and just don't build enough heat. The early day 454/330's didn't even come with oil coolers.

I woukd imagine mikes didn't have oil stats cause the engines saw wot the majority of the time although but I'm not certain of that.

$360 for a new one from CP right? So $200 shipped .

One of my engines lost a lifter, so the main bearings on that engine don't look good at all, but that is to be expected. The other engine, everything is fine, BUT there is minor rust on the tie bars of the lifters, and the cam looks terrible. Again, with only 180 hours on them, I would have expected them to look new, or very good condition at a minimum.

As John said, these engines were designed to be run hard, not idle around. My guess is, that is what happened. I see no harm in running oil coolers, but plenty of harm can happen without them. It may be a while, but I will post pictures of the engines as they are being torn down. If I end up having Wesco or Chief rebuild them, I'll still have them send me pictures of what they find.