- Sure we've done some sweet cooling system upgrades
but there's a whole nother fluid in your engine
that can overheat.
And that's your engine oil.
So if you're driving hard, you're driving on the track,
you're living in the desert
or you're turbocharging your Miata,
your engine oil can get too hot to do its job
and yeah all the fluids in your car matter.
But your engine oil is at the top
of the totem in terms of importance,
but how do you even stop your engine oil from overheating?
And how do you even know when you need to?
Well, today we're going to answer those questions and more
because we're gonna preemptively install
this sweet little oil cooler under this stupid little Miata.
Now, if it seems like I'm just filibustering on
the whole turbo install, well, it's kind of
cause I am much like you guys, I'm at the mercy
of Auto Parts suppliers and parts aren't in stock.
So I'll turbo as soon as I can.
Until then we're gonna do some upgrades like oil coolers.
I'm Zack and this is Money Pit.
Let's be cool again, no I don't work.
(playful music)
Alright and before we get into it,
let's get a grip on what we're really doing.
Now engine oil, like most fluids gets thinner
as it heats up.
So to demonstrate that
I've got a very scientific experiment lined up,
I've got this Valvoline VR 120 50.
This is what I run in the RB.
And I had this in the freezer.
So it's pretty cold.
We're gonna put it in this little dropper
and see how quickly it passes through that little tiny hole.
And we're gonna do the same thing
with the same oil at a much higher temperature.
All right, it's not that cold 60 degrees,
it's been in the freezer for like 20 minutes.
But it's cold enough that you can see how slowly it flows.
So let's see at what rate it comes out this tip.
And now this is some thick engine oil, this is 2050.
So it might take a while and I'm not putting any pressure.
I'm not squeezing it.
Just letting it drip out how it wants to drip really slow,
aah really slow.
- [Eddie] Now we're gonna wait
for it all to come out right?
- Yeah that's the only way to know.
So we'll time the entire amount and then we can do it again.
Right? That's the only way to make this scientific.
All right now let's stick this in the sun
for like 20 minutes
and see how it acts after a warms up.
Science.
(upbeat music)
You know what I hope we don't have an oil crisis today.
- [Eddie] Nice plug man.
- Thanks man.
All right, so the sun
has got our oil up to a whopping 130 degrees Fahrenheit.
So we're only about double in terms of temperature.
I think it was 60 degrees before.
So 70 degrees more and you can already see just
how much more thin it is.
It just is so much more runny
and flows so much better or resists flow so much less.
And you can see, I mean,
clearly that's just coming right out of the tip,
hardly any resistance.
So you can imagine that as you continue
to get a hotter it continues to get thinner.
And that's good to a point there's an operating temperature
at which your engine oil should run
and you really want it to run colder than that.
You don't want your engine oil to be as thick as it was
when we started this.
That's why you shouldn't beat on your car
until your engine oil is up to temperature.
Well, at least above like 150 degrees Fahrenheit.
(upbeat music)
So how do you know when you need an oil cooler?
What is too hot?
Just so you got to look at your situation.
I live in Southern California where it is hot.
It's basically the desert.
I am taking the car to track days.
I like to beat on it in the canyons
and we're gonna stick a turbocharger on it,
which is gonna add a lot of heat.
So for me, an oil cooler obviously makes sense.
Things are hot and I'm not helping.
But if for you it really depends on what you got going on,
what you got going on in your engine bay,
where you live and how you drive.
So if your situation checks all these boxes,
yeah it probably makes sense.
But if you're looking more like these boxes,
probably not so much.
Okay so now that we know what we're up against
and we know that we want an oil cooler, what do we do?
(upbeat music)
Well, the boys over at Flyin' Miata sent us
their oil cooler kit for the Miata and boy it's sweet.
It comes with a nice set trap oil cooler.
It's basically just a radiator for your oil.
The oil goes through this air can flow through these fins
and remove heat from your oil.
It's really simple.
So to get the oil to the cooler,
you have to install this sandwich plate.
Basically it sandwiches where your filter goes
and oil will come out
and back in these two holes, it's pretty smart.
It's got a thermostat so that you're not cooling your oil
while it's still too cold.
So honestly this should be a pretty easy installed,
which I am excited about.
Especially after all those dashboards.
(upbeat music)
All right we got the car in the garage.
Now I'm gonna lift it up because well our oil filter
and basically everything we're gonna be working on,
is under our new intake manifold.
So we're gonna be working
from underneath pretty much entirely today.
(upbeat music) (Jack tool squeaking)
(clattering)
It ain't going nowhere.
(tool scrapping)
Hey I found a nut.
(upbeat music)
Kinda looks important.
Well, we'll just put that there for now.
Alright so the first thing I'm gonna do to get ready
to install this thing is put
these fitting adapters into our actual oil cooler,
Flyin' Miata includes these
and they basically go from the O ring fitting
that the cooler has to an AN fitting for the lines
that we're using.
And luckily, our little experiment,
afforded me a nice little oil dispenser
when you're putting these kinds
of aluminum fittings together ORF fittings,
anything of this sort, just a little bit of engine oil
or assembly lube will make sure you don't mess up threads.
So these are aluminum fittings that we're gonna be using.
And any time you're really working with any AN fittings,
they're usually gonna be made out of aluminum
and aluminum while it's lightweight
and good at transferring heat and doing a lot of stuff,
it's kind of soft and it's easy to damage.
So when you tighten these kinds of fittings,
you can do a few things.
You can get specific arm wrenches
that are made out of aluminum.
They're anodized so they're not any harder
than the fittings that you're trying to tighten.
So these do a pretty good job of not damaging your fittings.
You can also just use an old school Crescent wrench
with a little bit of masking tape on it
to try to protect the finish.
And it's really it's not that big of a deal if you
had damaged the finish a little bit
but I mean, these are nice new fittings.
You want it to look nice right?
So a little masking tape can go a long way.
(upbeat music)
All right so we've got our fittings in our cooler.
So this thing's pretty much ready to go in the car.
So I guess it's time to get under the car.
I'm gonna pull off the old oil filter,
probably make a little bit of a mess
and then we can start installing.
We can put our sandwich plate on, put our lines on
and mount our cooler.
Let's do it.
So this thing has a pretty fresh oil change in it.
I just changed it probably a couple of 100 miles ago.
So I'm not gonna do an oil change while we do this.
And I'm gonna try to not lose that much oil.
We'll see how it goes.
So I'm gonna put a little purple tile down.
And then I'm just gonna hold this cup.
Are you ready?
What?
- [Eddie] You're gonna hold a Dixie cup?
- Yeah, hell yeah I'm gonna hold a Dixie cup.
Ah damn it.
(laughing)
Literally could not have been worse.
(laughing)
- [Eddie] Oh My God my knee.
- I honestly didn't think it was gonna go that bad.
(laughs)
I've done that before with success.
- [Eddie] Let me see what you caught in that Dixie cup.
- Hey, there's still plenty in the filter though,
you know, we didn't lose it all.
(laughs)
(upbeat music)
Okay. Now that we've cleaned up our little oil crisis,
we can continue.
All right now we need
to get our sandwich plate ready to install.
All we gotta do is install our fitting adapters into this.
A little overing Jonny here.
Get a little oil on.
(upbeat music)
(wrench clacking) (upbeat music)
Cool. All right.
Now the last thing we need
to do get a little oil on our sealing gasket here,
help it seal up.
(upbeat music)
So we're ready to install our sandwich plate here.
And it's gonna be pretty easy.
Basically this a sealing surface goes in place
of the old oil filter.
So this will just go on.
Then our little threaded adapter will spin
onto the old oil filter threads.
And then these are gonna be our new oil filter threads.
But without further ado,
we're just gonna put this on thread it into place
and I'm gonna leave it a little loose
so I can adjust we want to get fitment and just right,
so we're not gonna tighten it up yet.
We're just gonna get her on.
(upbeat music)
All right so now we're ready
to mount up our actual oil cooler
and to do that it should be pretty easy.
Flyin' Miata includes these brackets,
they sandwich in on the front bolts
of your power steering rack here.
So we'll be able to mount the thing right here.
It's gonna look really nice.
I hope we don't have any clearance issues
but if we don't, it should be pretty, pretty sweet.
(upbeat music) (clanging)
Okay, that was pretty easy.
Yeah, look at that, that's that's pretty good.
Oh, you know what I need to do.
I also need to put oil in this thing.
If I let this dry,
the engine would end up without oil pressure
for just a second but a second is too long.
Now this does use a thermostat right?
So that it's only working when the oil is up to 10,
but it works on the far end of the system
if that makes sense.
So if it needs to fill
this whole thing from empty before,
oil pressure gets to the rest of the engine.
The engine will be without oil pressure just for a second.
And that's too long.
So we're gonna fill this thing most of the way with oil,
not brimming cause well you saw
what kind of mess I can make.
- [Eddie] All right she's still.
Let's see if he can keep all that oil in there.
(soft music) (laughing)
- I'll sacrifice my body if, if not, not
- [Eddie] The precious carpet.
- Yeah that's right.
(gentle upbeat music)
- [Eddie] Yeah that's good.
- It good.
Alright so now we've got our cooler mounted.
We've got our sandwich plate loosely in place.
Now we're going to fish our lines into place,
get everything sorted out, get it all fitted just right.
So that the lines are rubbing on anything.
And everything's nice and happy.
Then we can tighten down the sandwich plate,
tighten our lines up, put our filter back on and that's it.
(electronic music)
All right so the lines are attached to the sandwich plate.
They're attached to the oil cooler
and they are run in a way that makes me feel warm
and fuzzy inside.
So I'm gonna put some zip ties on them just
to make sure they stay where I've got them.
Tighten up the sandwich plate and baby we're home free.
This thing looks awesome.
(electronic music)
Everywhere you look.
There's something cool going on.
- [Eddie] there's money.
(laughing)
(electronic music)
- Alright so before we get this thing back on the ground,
we're gonna fire it up
so I can easily take a look from underneath.
Make sure there are no leaks.
And then we'll put it on the ground top off the oil level.
And that's it.
What a smooth day.
(upbeat music) (engines roaring)
Any leaks?
- [Eddie] Eeh
(upbeat music)
- Is that a no.
- [Eddie] Yes you got it right.
- Nice nice nice.
You got me a little bit. - Did I?
Am not gonna lie.
He had me in the first half, but the second half.
It's all mine looks like this thing's dry, which is sweet.
Now granted, I'm gonna want to check again after driving
for a while once the oil thermostat opens
and it's really flowing, like, like it should
but it's nice to know that things are dry for now.
So I'm gonna get off of Jack stands
and get the oil level topped off.
Make sure we're all good.
And that's it.
And we're still right up on there.
We're doing it.
Man, wow, would you look at us?
What a day it's been?
That's a pretty good mod.
That's a solid mod in my opinion.
Well thought out high quality
and there was no drama installing it.
Ah damn it (laughs)
So this has just been one of those things
where we're future proofing the car
for what we're gonna do.
And that's really the way you should modify a car.
You should kind of do these things before you need them.
If you do an oil cooler after you're overheating your oil,
it might be too late.
So thank you guys so much for watching.
I hope you had a fun time watching the video.
We had a good time making it.
As always don't forget to subscribe to the channel.
It helps us out a lot and don't forget
to follow me on Instagram @ZACHJOBE
and follow donut @DONUTMEDIA.
I'll see you guys next week.
- [Eddie] Still not gonna be a turbo.