My solution to a cracked oil cooler

[Dave Ingham]

After finally getting my 92 Talon back on the road after some much needed maintenance and putting my 97 Talon away, about the only thing that I haven't changed on the car decided to break. The oil cooler cracked which in turn allowed for a large amount of oil to enter into the cooling system. Being that this is my daily driver I needed to make something fast. So after about 4.5 hours on the lathe, milling maching, and buffing wheel I came out with this:




It is an oil filter spacer than replaces the factory coolant cooled oil cooler. It started life as a 3.25" piece of aluminum round stock that I bored multiple holes in and then cut some fairly deep grooves into it to hopefully allow for some cooling affect.

[John Hartman]

NICE Fing JOB MAN!!!

I would strongly suggest you put a cooler back in, or put an aftermarket one in, the turbo center bearing gets hot and the whole engine runs quite warm too.  I suspect its from the turbo and manifold tho, the N/T cars don't have a cooler there.

[Dave Ingham]

Being that I still have a water cooled turbo, I am not to worried about oil temp. I took it for a very spirited drive yesterday and I could still touch the cooling fins. Of course they were hot but not any hotter than a rad hose. I also change my oil every 5000 km so I shouldn't really have to worry about thermal break down. I have read a few threads on tuners about guys with forward facing OFH's and they haven't seen any negative side effects of not running an oil cooler.

[John Hartman]

good to know 

How much would you want to sell those for?

[Dave Ingham]

I probably wouldn't make another one because I built it with a buddy at his house. I do not have the tools, nor the time, as I am an engineering student at ubco, to start making these. Thank you very much for your interest though as well as your possitive comments.

[Brett Haviland]

or you can swap on a 1990 filter housing, they have the threaded holes in them for a external oil cooler, plus no stupid water/oil cooler to deal with EVER!  Thats what i run on my cars if i can.

[Dave Ingham]

Yeah, that is what I would have done if one as available to me, but unfortunately I dont know of any junk yards that have a 90 dsm with the engine still in it. I could have also bought a 90 FH from numorous US vendors but as previously stated, this car is my dd and I needed to fix it asap.