Temperatures For Oil And Water

[TommyR34]

This is a quick post on water and oil tempts, alot of people are getting tempts well above the 80°C mark on water and oil and in some cases into the 90's!!

Unless your giving it some or driving around the track, this is way too high...

To give an example of healthy tempts, while cruising on a 14°C morning the tempts shouldn’t even get hot enough to register on the MFD...On a 23°C day

with an intercooler temperature of 25°C they should be registering 71°C to 73°C in normal driving and a 3°C difference if giving it some throttle...

If your GTR is registering tempts up in the 80's or 90's its time to change the water pump and thermostat ...Nismo has designed a low temp thermostat which opens up at 62°C where as the OEM stock opens up at 75°C and a good upgrade to the stock OEM water pump is the N1 water pump, while doing these if the timing belt needs changing it would be a good time to swap it over as well.

As for boiling sounds comming from/in/around the engine bay this is not normal and should be taken care of with the above

[gotRICE?]

Im gonna be the 1st to say your wrong.

The stock Thermostat STARTs to open at 75 or whatever it is, but isnt completely open untill aroundabout the 85 mark.

Regardless of the situation, my R33 will sit at 84"C, whether its 10'C outside or 28'C.

Giving it a bootfull up a long hll i have seen it into the 90s, but it drops very quickly.

And a full day on the dyno where the room was reaching 38'C, the temp never went over 87'C.

So according to you, my pump and thermo arent operating correctly. Even though they are both OEM and both brand new.

I have also seen the odd post here and there saying the N1 pump for a street car isnt overly ideal because it flows to slowly.

I also just realized your talking about GTR's. But as far as im aware they run the same thermo and pump as a GTSt. So essentially will operate the same?

Edited May 10, 2011 by gotRICE?

[TommyR34]

I’m not saying your pump and thermo aren’t operating correctly…I’m posting it up as healthy operating temperature for a high performance vehicle and a cheap option to improve total performance..

And I’m not 100% sure on this, but climate conditions should be affecting the temperature reading your getting…?

[gotRICE?]

I'm not saying your pump and thermo aren't operating correctly…I'm posting it up as healthy operating temperature for a high performance vehicle and a cheap option to improve total performance..

And I'm not 100% sure on this, but climate conditions should be affecting the temperature reading your getting…?

Thermostats dont just open to keep the car cool. They also Close to keep the temps up. So yeah your correct there.

A cooler climate will just mean the thermo will stay shut longer to get the car up to operating temp quicker.

Running a Nismo thermo in a street car IMO is madness. 62'C is far to cold!

I guess if you re-tuned all of the warmup fuel maps to suit it would be ok, but on a stock ECU wouldnt it be running a tad on the rich side, as it never reaches the stock temp where the car will run most efficient?

Iv just had to do this in my R33 with my new ECU, need to adjust each temperature zone. So i figure the stock ECU will have a similar thing going on there?

Edited May 10, 2011 by gotRICE?

[mad082]

cold engine temps result in poor fuel economy because the engine runs richer when it's cold (cold start enrichment).

as gotrice said, the temps on thermostats are opening temps. then actual temp the engine should run at is in the 80's. it isn't unhealthy for the temps to get into the 90's on the odd occasion, and even towards high 90's when really giving it the beans for a long period of time, however for normal driving it should be low to mid 80's. to put it into perspective though, the clutch fun on a r33 doesn't fully kick in until well into the 90's.

thermostats also don't open like a switch (open or shut). they open gradually and vary how much they are open during operation to try and keep the engine at the ideal operating temp. with a cooling system that is operating at 100% effeciency you should see very little temperature variation between a day driving in snow and a day driving in the desert as the thermostat will open less on a colder day.

as for running a nismo thermostat, again as gotrice said, this is too cool for a street car. the car won't be running at optimum temps so if you are running a stock ecu you will be making less power and using more fuel than someone running the stock thermostat. the nismo thermostat opens at a lower temp in order to allow more coolant flow at high loads, such as on a racetrack, however plenty of people use the stock thermostat on track days with no issues with temps.

as for oil temps, oils viscosity ratings are based off certain temps, so if your engine isn't even registering on the MFD because it is so cool then you would need to adjust the weight oil you are using to compensate.

put simply, nissan designed the engines to run at certain temps and you seem to think that they got it wrong and so put in a thermostat designed more for motorsport use than everyday use, and you are most likely causing excess wear on your engine.

[TommyR34]

Yeah I am no longer running a stock ECU I have an apexi ECU thats been tuned

[TommyR34]

cold engine temps result in poor fuel economy because the engine runs richer when it's cold (cold start enrichment). as gotrice said, the temps on thermostats are opening temps. then actual temp the engine should run at is in the 80's. it isn't unhealthy for the temps to get into the 90's on the odd occasion, and even towards high 90's when really giving it the beans for a long period of time, however for normal driving it should be low to mid 80's. to put it into perspective though, the clutch fun on a r33 doesn't fully kick in until well into the 90's. thermostats also don't open like a switch (open or shut). they open gradually and vary how much they are open during operation to try and keep the engine at the ideal operating temp. with a cooling system that is operating at 100% effeciency you should see very little temperature variation between a day driving in snow and a day driving in the desert as the thermostat will open less on a colder day. as for running a nismo thermostat, again as gotrice said, this is too cool for a street car. the car won't be running at optimum temps so if you are running a stock ecu you will be making less power and using more fuel than someone running the stock thermostat. the nismo thermostat opens at a lower temp in order to allow more coolant flow at high loads, such as on a racetrack, however plenty of people use the stock thermostat on track days with no issues with temps.as for oil temps, oils viscosity ratings are based off certain temps, so if your engine isn't even registering on the MFD because it is so cool then you would need to adjust the weight oil you are using to compensate. put simply, nissan designed the engines to run at certain temps and you seem to think that they got it wrong and so put in a thermostat designed more for motorsport use than everyday use, and you are most likely causing excess wear on your engine.

Thanks for the info hugh!

[Mayuri Krab]

My car's temperature seem to be (using aftermarket gauge):

mid 70 deg Cs during normal driving (50-60km/h)

low 80 deg Cs when stopped at traffic light for extended period of time or traffic jams.

low 70 deg Cs when driving at freeway speed (100+km/h)

Also I found that if I use my A/C it will cause those temperatures to go up by a couple of degrees (most noticeably temperature at idle/stop-start traffic).

Highest I've seen is ~ 95 deg C, & this was during a 40+ deg C summer day using A/C & stuck in traffic.

Meanwhile the useless stock gauge doesn't move an inch from its default position (just under 1/2 way).

[89CAL]

The stock gauge isn't really a precision gauge, just to show that your car is about where it should be and warn if it's to hot.

I'm surprised you get such low highway temps. I think I get low 80's on the highway

[tridentt150v]

My oil temp sits on 85' all day on the highway. It will go up to 90-95' on a +40'C day. I no longer use a water temp gauge, just use the std one. OT, EGT and OP now. I found water temp not that much use, it didn't tell me anything that the std gauge doesn't say [except that the std one has no graduations or values on it].

I just did a +900km trip in one day and my temp stayed on 80-85' till night time and them it shot up to 90'C, but that was due to the midges [see my other thread in FI section]. 90'C for oil is still good to go.

[NickR33]

you NEED to get some heat in your oil (90°+) to help clean the motor of carbon build up... tootling around everyday with oil temps under 80° is not great for your engine

I had the Nismo thermostat in my car... pointless on a street car... on cold nights it made it impossible to get any real heat into the engine... I have a/m radiator and oil cooler though

I don't drive over 3K rpm until the oil gets to 70°... and I don't rev it right out until its at least 80°... oil/water will both sit around 90° when I'm giving it a hard time... that's with well above stock power output though

GTRs run a bit hotter than GTSts in my experience... the extra turbo and plumbing is the main cause... front diff and a big FMIC don't help either... extra weight etc etc

[TommyR34]

you NEED to get some heat in your oil (90°+) to help clean the motor of carbon build up... tootling around everyday with oil temps under 80° is not great for your engineI had the Nismo thermostat in my car... pointless on a street car... on cold nights it made it impossible to get any real heat into the engine... I have a/m radiator and oil cooler thoughI don't drive over 3K rpm until the oil gets to 70°... and I don't rev it right out until its at least 80°... oil/water will both sit around 90° when I'm giving it a hard time... that's with well above stock power output thoughGTRs run a bit hotter than GTSts in my experience... the extra turbo and plumbing is the main cause... front diff and a big FMIC don't help either... extra weight etc etc

Thanks for the info guys!

[TommyR34]

Seems as if it's agreed that you want the temps to stabilise arond the 75-85 mark for both water and oil when cruising around, And when giving it some 85-95 both water and oil

[Mayuri Krab]

My oil temp sits on 85' all day on the highway. It will go up to 90-95' on a +40'C day. I no longer use a water temp gauge, just use the std one. OT, EGT and OP now. I found water temp not that much use, it didn't tell me anything that the std gauge doesn't say [except that the std one has no graduations or values on it].

I found my stock gauge to be crap, as when my car overheated (due to worn out thermostat & rad cap) the stock gauge just registered slightly above 1/2 way (still no where near into the H region). Lucky for me I've read some info on here that says when your stock gauge ever moves from its normal position just under 1/2 position you many have a overheat issue. So I granny drove it back & bingo my coolant was boiling away from the overflow so the coolant temperature definitely got over 110 deg C meanwhile the stock gauge still read just over 1/2 way.

As for the oil temperature gauge, what is the proper location to mount the senders? I've one that is currently just mounted onto a sandwich plate where the oil filter goes on top, however I've being told that the most accurately position for the sender unit should be somewhere in the sump area?

Currently my oil temperature usually settles ~80 deg C (however it seem to take very long to do that, some most of my short trips only see oil temp go up to the mid 70s, meanwhile the coolant temperature has already reached normal levels). Has this got to do more due to the location of my oil temperature sender unit?

[BrynDETT]

hmmm reading this thread makes me think i dont have a crazy overheating problem at all...i thought it was bad car idleing around 85c and i have seen up to 98c thrashing it ... but thats after some fairly hard driving and then going though 3 gears to the limter with wheelspin and limiter..... the thread has made my day

Edited May 13, 2011 by BrynDETT

[gotRICE?]

SAU is great for making people overly paranoid over things like this haha.

[zebra]

Cold oil temps = mega wear on bearings/cams/rings etc, Same with water temps, Engines are build to have the correct clearences at the temps they were designed for.

In the RB's case its low 80's for water temp.

Running at 60 degrees means the pistons are loose in the bores, and have a tendancy to break.

If the motor is built to run cold, eg NASCAR motors, than the clearences are a lot tighter, when they get hot they break.

[NISMO]

I have also seen the odd post here and there saying the N1 pump for a street car isnt overly ideal because it flows to slowly.

I would kinda agree with this.

I notice on mine, in a bit of traffic, at constant lowish rpm, and the engine gets quite worm, very quickly. However as soon as you pick the revs up, she cools down just as quick. I've driven with a non N1 water pump, and you can definitely notice the difference. Not using the car as a daily means i've got no concerns with it, as usually the only time i drive it is on weekends, and hardly ever anywhere near traffic.