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diy oil cooler ideas


Gixxus Christ!

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Ok so the honda needs her blood cooled down a bit so I bought an adaptor that will allow me to not only run a cooler, but also run spin-on filters (bonus). I've looked at some off the shelf lockhart coolers and decided they just don't have that home brew bike feel, so I'm planning to put together my own. For the core I'm looking it this:http://pages.ebay.com/motors/link/?nav=item.view&id=371136074227&alt=web

It looks cool, is the right size and 7 rows should be enough to drop my oil Temps 40 or 50 degrees.

Planning on building my own braided lines at summit once I figure out my measurements.

Anyone been down this road before? Any advice to offer? I'm all eyes.

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Looks pretty cool. Not sure how much the powdercoating would affect its effectiveness. You take aluminum with great thermal conductivity and coat it with powder-coating which might technically act somewhat as an insulator. Hopefully it doesn't get all the surface area of the fins. Definitely believe it's better than no oil cooler but maybe wouldn't draw as much heat out as a bare aluminum cooler.

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From my brief Google research the emmissivity rate of powder coated aluminium is much higher than polished or plain cast so it seems like that's a good thing.

If paint/powder coating hindered performance why is almost every radiator and oil cooler black?

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I'm not saying the radiator linked won't work, but wouldn't it be simpler to use an oil-cooler from an existing motorcycle of similar displacement?

 

The CB850 is similar enough in size to a Katana 750 that it would seem like that's a good candidate to poach from.  same cylinder configuration, etc.

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I'm not saying the radiator linked won't work, but wouldn't it be simpler to use an oil-cooler from an existing motorcycle of similar displacement?

The CB850 is similar enough in size to a Katana 750 that it would seem like that's a good candidate to poach from. same cylinder configuration, etc.

Yeah but you run into issues with the lines. 90° banjo fittings on the top of the cooler, to hard lines to rubber lines to 14mm threads into the crank case....more of a pain in the ass than its worth just to make the lines. With this I just use some an 10 to an 6 reducers to some an 6 braided line to an6 to 1/4 npt fitting and I'm done. Line is cheap, fittings are easily available and my cooler will match my tank and side covers.

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Yeah but you run into issues with the lines. 90° banjo fittings on the top of the cooler, to hard lines to rubber lines to 14mm threads into the crank case....more of a pain in the ass than its worth just to make the lines. With this I just use some an 10 to an 6 reducers to some an 6 braided line to an6 to 1/4 npt fitting and I'm done. Line is cheap, fittings are easily available and my cooler will match my tank and side covers.

 

Sounds like you put more thought into it than I did with my seat-o-pants idea.  Let me know how it works.  I saw someone with an oil cooler on a big-bore XR100 (140) flat-track bike.  I'm intrigued by the idea of adding oil coolers to bikes that don't have them stock.

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Since we run the dirt bike engines at sustained high rpm so much, I'm speculating that an oil cooler would make the engine more reliable, and allow it to maintain max hp throughout the duration of the race.

It's something I might toy with trying for an F3 or F2 build.

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Since we run the dirt bike engines at sustained high rpm so much, I'm speculating that an oil cooler would make the engine more reliable, and allow it to maintain max hp throughout the duration of the race.

It's something I might toy with trying for an F3 or F2 build.

Sandwich plates are available for most filter sizes. Easy mod and for sure, cooler oil = happy motor.

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