<VV> Re: air cooling effect

[rbuckridge at comcast.net]

I'm no expert but I am a crew member for Bryan Gardella on his Legends Race Car Team.
See www.gardellaracing.net

The Legends Cars use the 1200 cc Yamaha motorcycle engine for a power plant. In the bike the cylinders & exhaust headers face into the air stream, and they do run an oil cooler. Same motor installed in the Legends car is turned 90°counter clock so the cylinders run down the left side of the car. Cooling has always been a problem.

We try to expose the engine to as much air as possible and run a larger oil cooler with a fan behind it to pull the air through the cooler. It is our belief that the cooler alone does little and you need that fan to help pull air through the cooler. We also run a top quality synthetic oil and change it often.

We have also found that oil temperatures climb quickly but then stabilize easily so at the end of an 8 lap heat race we are as hot as after a 40 lap feature race that could mean running 100 laps because they don't count yellow flag laps.

We don't run any gauges in the car as the driver doesn't have time to look at the gauges, but we do monitor oil temperature very carefully with an IR gun. Maybe what I am saying here is to run a fan behind your oil coolers to pull air through the cooler. Seems to work for us and we have been racing for 5- 6 years now without any oil cooling related engine failures.

Roy - Bayshore Corvair & crew member 14NJ