Thread: Oil Cooler

I've never heard of this.

In the front there is the Radiator (coolant), ATF cooler, Intercooler and the AC condensor.

Inhibitor wont have anything to do with an oil cooler.

The radiator is aluminium though and needs to have red OAT coolant kept in it, nothing green.

Underneath turbo is an oil cooler/heat exchanger. Sits on the side of the engine block. There is a coolant hose which come from around rear of engine into oil cooler.


When it corrodes through what ends up happening is that you oil get pumped into the coolant and makes a great mess

Ahhhh. Something new every day

John,
You are correct, poor coolant will corrode the alloy element in the heat exchanger and eventually the unit will give out and allow the oil to transfer to the cooling system. The cooling system will overpressurise and eventually blow something. Mine was a hose.
I pulled over when the radiator hose went only to find an engine bay full of oil. One of the flexible joiners in the metal cooling system pipes let go under the overpressure from the oil pump (system).

All the components in the cooling system including radiator, heat exchanger, thermostat, oil cooler(oil/water exchanger that corroded) and all of the flexible hoses had to be replaced because of contamination from messy emulsified oil mixed with coolant. It took two weeks to strip the head and flush out all the crap from all of the galleries. Total bill $8K

In hindsight from reviewing all the components the only way to tell it was going other than stripping the cooler would be to pull off the radiator hoses when you are doing a radiator flush and check all of the alloy flanges in the system. If any of them show corrosion then i would have it checked.

The advice i got at the time was to stop using inhibitor and normal water and change to distilled water with the "redline" additive Apparently it has a lot better heat transfer properties and causes less corrosion issues when used with water ( especially the hard water in Perth).

Stu



Mine gave out at 130K wich my mechanic said was very early. The only thing we could think of was that the previous owner had used normal water , bore water etc fo coolant when away.

Initially a radiato

Originally Posted by stusgonesailing

John,
<snip>
The advice i got at the time was to stop using inhibitor and normal water and change to distilled water with the "redline" additive Apparently it has a lot better heat transfer properties and causes less corrosion issues when used with water ( especially the hard water in Perth).

<snip>

Redline Water Wetter works well in race engines, and I know Tim Slako (the Redline importer) uses it in their workshops in all sorts of vehicles without supplementary additives, but I'd rather trust the corrosion inhibitors in either an OAT or HOAT with distilled water.
FWIW, OAT coolants like the Caltex/Texaco Long Life one used by Land Rover have a heat transfer rate about half way between conventional coolants and pure water. They are pretty good.

Hi Stu
BlackBetty is pressurising the system but not mixing her drinks.Kie4 Richard is going to look into it for me on the weekend.
Andrew

"
All the components in the cooling system including radiator, heat exchanger, thermostat, oil cooler(oil/water exchanger that corroded) and all of the flexible hoses had to be replaced because of contamination from messy emulsified oil mixed with coolant. It took two weeks to strip the head and flush out all the crap from all of the galleries. Total bill $8K "



Let me guess, was yours a white landrover discovery fixed by Rover Tech. OUCH!!!!!!

Yep,
that was me.