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Author Topic: Vanagon progress  (Read 63634 times)

Reply #90October 27, 2008, 03:56:08 pm

Baxter

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« Reply #90 on: October 27, 2008, 03:56:08 pm »
Honesty, whats the issue with running hose to the front?
When I fit one of the kits I sell it takes about an hour.
So long as the oil pump is in good shape and you don't use too narrow pipe there really is not problem, and it works.
By the time you have fannied about with fans and fancy fittings you could have just bought the right thing and had this job bottomed!
Plus you get that usefull increase in oil capacity which isn't a bad thing considering how small the engine is, how heavy the van is and how hard the lump has to work carrying all that weight around.
Keep the factory oil/water heat exchanger and if your oil cooler is doing it's job right it will also keep the engine temps more constant, again a plus point.

Reply #91October 27, 2008, 06:38:46 pm

Luckypabst

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« Reply #91 on: October 27, 2008, 06:38:46 pm »
Engine temps have never been an issue on this van (except the other night when I realized I'd forgot to bleed the heater circuit), regardless of the air temp (up to 130 degrees, up a 9% grade) or oil cooler configuration. If anything I've noticed a slight drop in coolant temps after removing the oil cooler from the coolant circuit.

I'm curious about the front mounted oil cooler and oil changes - do you guys disconnect the hoses and pump out the old oil? I'm not convinced that there's not a substantial pressure drop and the $150 in braided hose is not appealing to me.

Chris
'82 TD Westy
'81 NA Caddy

Reply #92October 27, 2008, 09:10:59 pm

HarryMann

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« Reply #92 on: October 27, 2008, 09:10:59 pm »
Interesting...

I've always thought my truck ran hotter oil than anyone else, and worse fuel consumption... but sort of come to the conclusion that I have to believe what I see, and measure myself... even if that's always 10C more temp or 10% less mpg.

But it is Syncro Doka usually with knobblies on... here's a mix of long distance and days of off-road driving, mTdis and eTDis seem to get a fair bit better.
Pink is the mpg-to-date, obviously becoming fairly unvarying as it progresses. Blue  is actual raw fillup data, black is always a good trend to plot


Simon will no doubt be using high spec reinforced hose in those kits, 1/2" BSP as well.
As soon as I did a few sums with 3/4" and 7 litres total capacity popped up on the calculator, that was pretty well it.
Unreinforced 3/4" hoses at £50 in my hand, terminated, was a gamble. Need a big radius to prevent kinking. The engine Bay is the worst bit, but the Doka has more height to play with - length is pretty critical and struck lucky first time, you definitely don't want too much, 3" would be a lot to lose with a big bore hose. Then there's those cut and clamp solutions... we are only talking about 100~200 psi in extremis, most auto cooler pipes seem to be made up to take 1,000's of psi!!!

I should have gone for a 25 row cooler, in retrospect... it would also reduce an pressure loss, but there';s very little I should think at 3/4". Nor 5/8 or 1/2"; 3/8" front to back is not uncommon :P
High pressure loss is not an issue it seems, from 1/2" upwards with a 19 or 25 row full width(235mm) cooler.


Whilst changing oil with the filter off, I motor the engine a bit with the fuel off, which seems to pump some out of the cooler circuit, or it self-siphons out of the filter housing at some angles. Not too bothered, as long as I'm changing a filter and get most of it out... can be blown through if necessary I suppose.

Another thing, am running fully synthetic turbo diesel oil, 10W-40, which can be got here now around the £20 / 5 litres price.
So it's all down to the pipework as you say, buy a complete kit or seek out a tame hydraulics shop.

Reply #93October 27, 2008, 09:59:08 pm

blackdogvan

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« Reply #93 on: October 27, 2008, 09:59:08 pm »
Another option.... covers 3/4 of the inlet area. Photo is pre-thermostat install.

Took 2 min to mount with self tapping sheet metal screws. Kept the stock unit to help with warm up. Room for a fan if required.

Great thread BTW!

1991 Vanagon 1.9 mTDI

Reply #94October 27, 2008, 10:32:43 pm

Luckypabst

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« Reply #94 on: October 27, 2008, 10:32:43 pm »
Cool deal - thanks for the conversation, guys! I wish I had a Syncro Doka...

The remote filter is a great solution if I decide to reinstall the OEM cooler - never thought of that.

Chris
'82 TD Westy
'81 NA Caddy

Reply #95October 27, 2008, 11:13:03 pm

arb

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« Reply #95 on: October 27, 2008, 11:13:03 pm »
Wish my Jeep Rubicon got those numbers !!  12 mpg is average - on road :-(

True, I can go place the Syncro can't, but I can't sleep well in the Jeep !!

After the Caravan is runing with the 1.6L TD, the Jeep will be next !! The diesel version they sell to the rest of the world gets north of 20 mpg.

Reply #96October 30, 2008, 08:05:14 pm

Luckypabst

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« Reply #96 on: October 30, 2008, 08:05:14 pm »
I'm gonna give this a shot and see how it goes...

Free is better than 30' of hose, if it works:
'82 TD Westy
'81 NA Caddy

Reply #97October 30, 2008, 08:32:59 pm

HarryMann

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« Reply #97 on: October 30, 2008, 08:32:59 pm »
Funny thing was, to get my rear cooler hooked up I took the 3/8" hoses that came with it to be altered and have new ends put on to fit the oil housing take-off plate. Cutting a long story short, I was eventually charged £47-80 (inc VAT) to make some up to fit

Of course I didn't go back there to get 30' of 3/4" hose with 4 fitted ends, but where I did go cost me £50 cash...

Some kinda irony there, especially as it as good as cost me an engine and a year  :)

Reply #98November 15, 2008, 06:21:57 pm

ragulka

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« Reply #98 on: November 15, 2008, 06:21:57 pm »
Hey

I'm pretty new to engines and such, but i was wondering, why do you need an extra oil cooler if theres a heat exchanger built in the oil filter?
Also I saw on one of the pics that there was also an extra oil filter with a heat exchanger?

Reply #99November 15, 2008, 07:02:46 pm

Luckypabst

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« Reply #99 on: November 15, 2008, 07:02:46 pm »
Dunno about a second oil filter? One of my pictures?

The heavy van is hard on the little daintily powered turbo diesels and just having a turbo pushes lots of heat into the oil so any extra cooling capacity is a plus.

It seems to be accepted that the OEM heat exchanger is great for bringing the oil to temp quickly and marginal after that for removing excess heat from the oil. My specific goal was to bring oil temps down while also not introducing that heat into the cooling system with the option of adding the heat exchanger back, depending on how things turned out.

I don't think the aux. oil cooler is efficient enough how I have it setup since oil temps still climb to near 250 degrees and don't really drop all that quick on the downhills. I'm thinking of adding a cooling fan or maybe even some NACA ducts to make it look really fast. I'll probably also reinstall the OEM heat exchanger to see what difference that makes.

Edit: I just replaced my head gasket due to the old one having some pressure retention issues. This may help indirectly with oil cooling but I don't expect much improvement.

Chris
'82 TD Westy
'81 NA Caddy

Reply #100November 16, 2008, 07:18:39 am

ragulka

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« Reply #100 on: November 16, 2008, 07:18:39 am »
Hey, sorry, the second oil filter is what i saw on the latest blackdogvan post. At least it's what looks very much like a oil filter.

I have a vegetable oil conversion on my Vanagon - do you think if i installed a turbo, i could use the extra heat to warm up the vegetable oil?

Reply #101November 16, 2008, 01:29:29 pm

Luckypabst

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« Reply #101 on: November 16, 2008, 01:29:29 pm »
That's just the primary filter mounted remote. Looks like it was done that way to make it easy to plumb in the oil cooler.

Chris
'82 TD Westy
'81 NA Caddy

Reply #102November 16, 2008, 07:40:56 pm

jackbombay

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« Reply #102 on: November 16, 2008, 07:40:56 pm »
Quote from: "Luckypabst"
I'm gonna give this a shot and see how it goes...

Free is better than 30' of hose, if it works:


  That looks quite nice!

  The one thing I would add would be some foam weather stripping of some sort in any of the gaps that are big enough to fit it in, for the bigger gaps you can get 1 1/2" X 1 1/2" foam used to deal air conditioners into window openings.

  My oil cooler set-up is similar to yours, and completely sealing it in made its performance go from ok to kick ass.

Reply #103November 16, 2008, 08:05:55 pm

Luckypabst

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« Reply #103 on: November 16, 2008, 08:05:55 pm »
Quote


  The one thing I would add would be some foam weather stripping of some sort in any of the gaps that are big enough to fit it in, for the bigger gaps you can get 1 1/2" X 1 1/2" foam used to deal air conditioners into window openings.



That's what I have planned, I just got caught up in other things right now. I'm gonna mount my little handheld weather meter in there too, to see what amount of airflow I get through the oil cooler at highway speeds.

Chris
'82 TD Westy
'81 NA Caddy

Reply #104December 06, 2008, 04:24:54 pm

Luckypabst

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« Reply #104 on: December 06, 2008, 04:24:54 pm »
This doesn't bode well for my oil cooler (or the intercooler that'll be mounted in the same fashion on the other side).

With the GPS running, I logged a max vehicle speed of 54.8 mph. The wind meter mounted in the direct airstream on the right side, under the intake vent only recorded a max wind speed of 14.4 mph through the oil cooler.

Time for a fan.

Chris
'82 TD Westy
'81 NA Caddy

 

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