Quote:
Originally Posted by Daox
Completely correct.
This is exactly what I thought, but apparently its not really the case. Oil Pan posted a bit ago that his oil pressure doesn't drop until significantly after the coolant is at operating temperature. Temperature testing would be very interesting to see how oil temp lags behind coolant temp.
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It might not be lagging behind. The oil might be as hot as the coolant when the coolant gets up to temperature. The oil might continue to heat up past that point, and it's not until it hits a higher temp that the viscosity starts dropping off noticeably. The oil has no way to shed it's heat, except through the engine itself. If you add a coolant to oil heat exchanger, your oil might never get hot enough for the oil pressure to drop much.
Whether or not there is any benefit to your oil being heated past ~200f, I wouldn't know. The downside being that it can break down at higher temps or just not give as much lubrication from having too little oil pressure.
Rather than flow the coolant through the oil pan and risk all your coolant ending up in your oil, you could always flow it around the outside of the oil pan one way or another. Not as direct, but safer.
A small electric pump could circulate coolant off of the heater core hoses. Find one meant for circulating solar hot water.
It doesn't have hot coolant flowing all the time (or often enough), but you could run oil through the cooling line that goes through the radiator meant for cooling transmission fluid. If there's any way to make that work for what you're trying to do...