But then I read this post on Probetalk:
http://forums.probetalk.com/showthread.php?t=1701316239mazda-head wrote: "It heats the oil up faster by tying into the water temperature (good thing, no matter where you live from alaska to houston) and stabilizes the high temp to the water temp when demands are high. It's not thermostatically controlled, though and doesn't shed heat to the air directly."
Then I realized that the placement of the coolant lines to the heat exchanger are routed from the block before the coolant reaches the radiator, then to the water pump neck where it gets circulated to the radiator. which means that it's circulating the coolant flow at it's hottest, not it's coolest.
The few benefits I can see from this are:
- Faster warmups which means less engine wear running cold during engine warmup/startup, lower cold emissions, etc.
- consistent (higher) oil temperature under light load and cold conditions.
- side-effect of stabalizing oil temperature during load
If the heat exchanger was designed to primarily cool oil flow, it would flow coolant after the fluid has passed through the radiator, but before entering the block. Which would be the fluid at it's coolest.
Which means you could make it be an "oil cooler" by rerouting the coolant intake line from the ATX coolant line on most KL series coolant intake neck where the thermostat is housed to either the heat exchanger directly OR for additional cooling, to the ATX oil cooler built into the radiator. ATX radiators will have the fittings already whereas you would need to tap out the fittings on an MTX radiator as I understand it.
You would want the coolant intake line to run after the thermostat as to not flow cold water during warmup but before the block. Then the second line you would want to run in line wherever so it pulls fluid from the thermostat area, not the water pump area.
This modification would use all OEM parts and doesn't use any additional engine bay room which is nice. You would just be running a couple longer hoses.
But I am unsure exactly which line would be the best to use to ensure the coolant flow direction.
And no, I haven't done this myself. But I'm hoping for some constructive criticism.
If I do not like your criticism though, I reserve the right to be a jerk.
http://forums.probetalk.com/showthread.php?t=1701316239