Draining and concentrating fluids
 

Been pondering this for a while.


If i drain the extra oil out of the engine i need about 1.7kJ/K less energy to warm the engine. If i concentrate the coolant from 50% to 75% that's another 2.4kJ/K.

Going from -20⁰C to 85⁰C those two mods should save me 430kJ!

That should speed up warmup as much as having an 800w block heater plugged in the first 9mins of driving.

(Assuming 1L of oil drained and 3L of coolant in the engine.)

Interesting idea... I can't say if it's worth the effort, but perhaps some of the regular quantity of oil could sequestered prior to cold start then slowly reintroduced to the system when there is an abundance of heat...

I guess I don't understand how you're going to keep the oil level within less than a 1L range. When you need to add oil will you pour in 250mL? 500? It doesn't seem very practical. Coolant I can see because first, if you mess it up it's not going to necessarily kill your engine, and second, you can measure it more precisely.

Well the difference between min and max on the stick is 1L, i'm not planning on draining and adding every time i drive.

Exactly, so what are you proposing then? There's really only that liter of "extra" oil to play around with.

Oh, well I have posted in the past that the manufacturers recommend NOT adding any oil UNTIL it gets to the add line; drag and perhaps other forms of racers have found that they reduce windage loss and gain horsepower by running minimal oil, so yeah go ahead and maintain it at the "add" level. Only thing is, that safety "cushion" against running too low is smaller so you have to be more vigilant.