Quote:
Originally Posted by turbophil
Of course, if this sandwich cooler is so great, why didn't the Lotus engineers take that approach? Tim M would be PO'ed if a guy deviated from Lotus's excellent engineering without good reason  I presume it's possible that Lotus took the approach they did due to cost and availability, as they often were forced to do with other parts on the car. |
Everything in life is a compromise (usually involving cost). From stuff I've read, people with oil temperature guages are seeing oil temps around 220 or so while doing track days in the middle of the desert. I suspect that the coolers are actually doing a very good job - at least for most people.
As for the pressure drop, the lines are fairly good size and probably more than handle the oil flow. It's not like there is a huge volume of oil flowing through the system. As the volume/velocity of floe goes up, the pressure drop would be significant, but again for our engines, the flow isn't really that high and it's probably sized about right (putting a bigger sized hose wouldn't have been a big deal for the factory if had been necessary).
And everything can be improved upon. It's all a matter of what an improvement in one area causes what effects in another (i.e. more cooling = more weight: etc.). And cost is always a trade off - it's one of the reasons that we drive Elises instead of Enzos...