ross2004 wrote:
You can get nice used NASCAR hoses on ebay for silly cheap. -10 is what they use for fuel and you can find many various lengths of it. You could cobble together a complete system for under $150 easily. What kind of oil psi do you have now? Expect to drop 5-10 with a cooler.
OK, well, dropping oil pressure is absolutely a non-starter. As Curtis pointed out, 460's need more oil pressure, not less. So it looks like until we install a high volume/pressure pump, an oil cooler's off the table.
We've tossed around the idea of an accumulator (grassroots accusump) but I'm concerned about starving the engine for oil on startup, and oil levels with the extra volume/ column of oil.
How about welding a bunch of metal "fins" to the oil pan, sort of a cheap cooler pan? Could duct air towards the pan to help out. May be a cheap fix with no affect on the oil pressure.
Also, you're really just guessing at the usefulness of an oil cooler until you know your existing oil temperature. I have a feeling the improvements you've made since the last race will help dramatically.
81cpcamaro wrote:
How about welding a bunch of metal "fins" to the oil pan, sort of a cheap cooler pan? Could duct air towards the pan to help out. May be a cheap fix with no affect on the oil pressure.
I was actually thinking about getting some thermally conductive adhesive and bonding some heat sinks wherever there's room, to the pan.
volvoclearinghouse wrote:
81cpcamaro wrote:
How about welding a bunch of metal "fins" to the oil pan, sort of a cheap cooler pan? Could duct air towards the pan to help out. May be a cheap fix with no affect on the oil pressure.
I was actually thinking about getting some thermally conductive adhesive and bonding some heat sinks wherever there's room, to the pan.
This can help too, but not as much as an oil cooler obviously. Heatsinks with adhesive already attached are sold for use in gaming PCs, but i don't know if the included adhesive would stand up to oil pan temperatures. Nothing in a computer goes over 80C.
volvoclearinghouse wrote:
In reply to curtis73:
As always, I appreciate your input and do not take it as snarky. I'm an engineer myself, so I tend to be relatively straightforward which can offend some people, but helps get straight to the point.
Much respect 
3) We have a water temperature gauge that fits into the stock location on the intake manifold, in the front of the engine, near the thermostat. We have not calibrated the gauge, but it is new-er.
Dangit... I thought for sure I was going to solve everything by telling you to move the sensor to the intake 
I see no reason to doubt the temps, then. A laser thermo on the water neck might remove that doubt.
4) Pullies are all stock, new belt, alternator charges good and fan spins well. Replaced the fan clutch, too.
The reason I mentioned this; I melted a belt once on a new chrome pulley setup. The smooth chrome let enough slip happen that it melted the belt and blued the chrome. I always sand the grooves on aftermarket pulleys now. But not an issue for you.
We have been running a 180 degree t-stat. I do not believe in running no thermostat. However, many guys seem to like running restrictor plates in place of the stat. So I drilled (4) 1/4" holes around the center of the t-stat. The engine gets up to about 185 when idling, then you can see the gauge go down to about 180 as the t-stat is apparently opening (this is another verification of the gauge being correct).
That seems to lend more weight to the air flow issue. Just hard to imagine that your massive engine bay can't support 250-ish hp worth of air flow. Regarding not running a stat: I don't like removing it either (other than for diagnostic testing) but as long as it is still getting up to temperature eventually I might consider it for racing. Might even get you a couple extra ponies, but at the potential expense of oil life.
Now, I just did this t-stat drilling, we haven't raced on it like that yet.
Interested to see the results
We don't have the vacuum advance connected- my understanding is that's mainly for part throttle cruising efficiency. Racing, we're either at WOT or idle, essentially. Ignition timing advances with RPM and seems to behave as it should (electronic ignition, no points).
Agreed, it doesn't do anything at WOT or idle... unless it is full manifold vacuum which can be very helpful in idle quality and idle temps... two things about which you don't care 
Your idle temps aren't suffering, and who cares how it idles. If this were a street car, I would say that the vac advance is a big issue. Since its racing at WOT or idle, it likely isn't. If it has an advance can on it, I might try hooking it up (ported) to see if it makes any difference in temps, but likely it won't.
One last thing- I thought the oil cooler was a parallel circuit, in that it would not impeded the flow of oil to the engine. If it is in series, however, then I agree with you- we absolutely should not touch that. I guess I need some clarification/ education about that. Will move forward with the additional water cooling, but let's discuss the oil cooler some more.
Parallel/Series makes little difference. Any oil cooler is adding a circuit, which means it will drop pressure and flow to the galleries. Typically a parallel cooler will drop mostly pressure (and subsequently flow) and a series cooler drops flow (with a potential for reduced pressure). A hp/hv pump can compensate, but one of the issues with the 460 is the size and capacity of the internal passages. Without modifying them, all that extra volume and pressure just tends to go to the path of least resistance. On a BBF that means lifter bores and (subsequently) valvetrain. Adding an oil cooler on any engine tends to add another path of reduced resistance. A parallel cooler can be restricted in flow to minimize the pressure it takes away, but then you are limiting how much heat it can exchange. I often wanted to experiment with passive oil flow cooling; use gravity to get valvetrain oil back to the pan via a heat exchanger. Oil (being relatively good at conductive heat) also responds pretty well to passive exchange. A small finned exchanger plumbed in to the bottom of the pan with the return hose nearest the pump pickup generates a wee bit of flow through the cooler without affecting the pressure circuit at all like a traditional cooler. Setups like that work well for differentials; don't see why they wouldn't work for oil pans.
Theres conductive adhesives out there good for 600*. You wont see a huge drop but if you got some heatsinks lying around it wouldnt hurt to try
Hey maybe you could shim the oil pump's pressure relief valve spring to bump up oil pressure.
Kenny_McCormic wrote:
curtis73 said:
A small finned exchanger plumbed in to the bottom of the pan with the return hose nearest the pump pickup generates a wee bit of flow through the cooler without affecting the pressure circuit at all like a traditional cooler. Setups like that work well for differentials; don't see why they wouldn't work for oil pans.
This is genius.
If you really want to get fancy, they make electric oil pumps that could improve the flow through the cooler loop. I really like this idea, it'd be not too hard to implement, either.
You can run the cooler loop on an electric pump only - you plumb into the pan and use an electric pump to push oil around the loop, and the engine's oiling system remains unaffected. Electric oil pumps are $$$ though.
I bet a power steering pump would make a fine circulation pump. Probably need to mount it pretty low though as I'm not sure if it will self prime. Though taking advantage of the natural circulation in the pan is simpler, cheaper, and easier to implement. You also wouldn't be erasing much work if you didn't like the results and wanted to add a pump, you'd keep the oil pan ports and cooler, just add a pump and redo the hoses.
Volvo, you might look into using the oil cooler off of a truck. The 460 in my F350 has one of these.
It mounts were the oil filter goes and the lower radiator hose runs through it. Granted it isn't a air/oil cooler, but towing a 13000# 35' camper, at 75 mph, with the A/C on, doesn't change my engine temps.
The only other thing I wonder is, are you getting air under the hood through the fenders with the fender liners missing? If the back of the fender sticks out farther than the front, could it be working like a scoop and pressurizing the engine bay?
Another thought. This was pretty popular in the 70s and 80s.
I seem to remember you could do that by adjusting the hinge on a lot of the older cars. I wonder how well it works since there is a high pressure area at the base of the windshield.
Kenny_McCormic wrote:
curtis73 said:
A small finned exchanger plumbed in to the bottom of the pan with the return hose nearest the pump pickup generates a wee bit of flow through the cooler without affecting the pressure circuit at all like a traditional cooler. Setups like that work well for differentials; don't see why they wouldn't work for oil pans.
This is genius.
Not sure its genius unless hot oil is the cause of his problems, but thanks. I want to know why its overheating in the first place 
In reply to curtis73:
I'm sure the oil could stand to be cooler, though I agree it's probably not the problem.
Quick update tonight: So I discovered the 302 Ford just has a little male-male fitting to adapt the filter to the block. The block is actually machined for the filter. The 460 is exactly the same. The angled truck/motorhome adapter thingie we have screws into a male-female adapter, that unscrews (with a 1-1/4" socket and a 4 foot cheater bar) from the block. I screwed the 302 fitting into the 460 and then the 460 oil filter screws right in and sticks straight out of the block.
Now, here's the interesting thing: that angled truck/motorhome oil filter adapter that was on the 460 until a few minutes ago has an inlet and outlet fitting, which are plugged, for an oil cooler. Yup. Looking at the design of the adapter, it looks like the oil cooler circuit is parallel to the oil filter circuit. So, theoretically, I guess, we could plumb in a cooler, using smaller lines, and it wouldn't really detract significantly from the pressure? The only issue is, since it just goes parallel with the filter, oil could bypass the filter and not get filtered. Not sure how concerned I am about that.
Thoughts?
How often do you change the oil on it? If you're changing it frequently with it being a race car and all that, having some unfiltered oil is probably not that big a deal.
Toyman01 wrote:
Volvo, you might look into using the oil cooler off of a truck. The 460 in my F350 has one of these.
It mounts were the oil filter goes and the lower radiator hose runs through it. Granted it isn't a air/oil cooler, but towing a 13000# 35' camper, at 75 mph, with the A/C on, doesn't change my engine temps.
The only other thing I wonder is, are you getting air under the hood through the fenders with the fender liners missing? If the back of the fender sticks out farther than the front, could it be working like a scoop and pressurizing the engine bay?
Good thought, I'll make sure I sledgehammer the trailing edge of the fender in a bit.
I was thinking the same thought you had about the trailing edge of the hood- that's right were positive pressure develops in the cowl area. We also no longer have hood hinges- we just have 4 hood pins and the hood lifts on and off. We lightened the hood sufficiently that one person can now pull the (very floppy) hood sheet off by themselves.
Finally, I have to say your whole story about towing a 6+ ton camper with an old 460 makes me really want to sell my PSD, buy an old BBF truck, and pocket about 10 grand.
BoxheadTim wrote:
How often do you change the oil on it? If you're changing it frequently with it being a race car and all that, having some unfiltered oil is probably not that big a deal.
Every race. Sometimes in between day 1 and day 2. I'm more concerned about a chunk of something breaking loose and not getting caught in the filter the first time 'round.
In reply to volvoclearinghouse:
Don't be too quick to sell. At those speeds I get about 6mpg. I just don't drive it enough to spend $10k+ to get better economy.
That and I like simple.
On airflow, you could do the old "tape strings to it" technique and watch it go around the track with some binoculars to make sure things are working as intended.
Another thing that comes to mind is maybe getting a pair of cheap multimeters off ebay (like so http://www.ebay.com/itm/M820C-DMM-Digital-Multimeter-Ammeter-Voltmeter-Ohmmeter-hFE-Temperature-Tester-/131368699182?hash=item1e962f452e) with a thermocouple function. Then you can look at things like airlow outlet temperatures, temperature drops across the radiator, how hot the oil pan is, etc. If you want data logging, aim the gopro at them.
Toyman01 wrote:
In reply to volvoclearinghouse:
Don't be too quick to sell. At those speeds I get about 6mpg. I just don't drive it enough to spend $10k+ to get better economy.
That and I like simple.
I haven't really been driving my F350 enough to justify having a diesel, anyway. And I also like simple. The last time I had the PSD in the shop it cost me way more than I care to remember. Does your truck have overdrive? Although I'm sure you don't use it when towing the camper.
In reply to volvoclearinghouse:
It's a 94 so not only does it have OD, it has EFI.
I watch the tachometer pretty closely when towing and usually leave it in OD unless the tach is showing TC lock and unlock, or it's downshifting a lot. It's got 4.11 gears in the rear and will pull in OD without a problem, even with the camper behind it. I turn off the cruise and just let it slow down on the hills if necessary. The key to keeping a automatic alive is a HUGE cooler and don't be in a such a hurry it's constantly having to shift or lock and unlock the converter. I also usually don't tow at 75, more like 65.
I keep thinking I need a diesel. Then I remember how much gas I can buy for $15K and how simple the 460 is. I'ts paid for, no turbo, no high pressure oil system, no injector pump, simple EFI, 6qt oil changes, and dirt cheap parts. I'll be keeping the big block for a while. Not to mention, gas just dropped under $2 a gallon.
My last oil change on the PSD cost me $130 for just the oil. Granted it was synthetic, but still... there were like 3 gallons of it. Yeah...I'm switching back to conventional.
We recently bought a Suburban, gas 350, 1991. So that'll likely be the primary tow vehicle after we sell the Ford. If we decide we need to have a truck for some reason, though, it won't be another 5 figure diesel monster. The Ford is fun as heck to drive, tows anything you stick behind it, and stubbornly refuses to kick out of OD unless you're driving up the side of a cliff with 2 cars behind you...but I just can't justify it's running costs and the money we have tied up in it. Plus, around here, every idiot and their brother has a PSD. Heck, diesel's 10 cents a gallon cheaper than gas!
