Quote:
Originally Posted by Jim Caughlin
Really hard to get the kind of temps needed into oil in the real world, even if you have an oil pan or oil tank heater on your car, you'll be surprised how quickly it cools down just driving to the lanes. Anything short of hot lapping and your oil is probably too cold. Same goes for trans and rearend.
Interesting sidenote, occasionally on the dyno, you accidentally get the oil too hot prior to a pull, counterintuitively the best thing you can do is fire the motor and it instantly sucks the heat out of the oil, it will drop 20 degrees if not more. Bringing up oil temp with the heater while the motor is turned off is easy, very hard to increase oil temp while the motor is running. Monitoring oil temp on a dyno definitely proves that cold oil sucks a lot of HP.
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Jim,
Right on the money on an engine loosing power with cold oil.
How many times have you removed the oil cap or valve covers and seen the accumulation of moisture before you make your first run of the day?
I believe the best approach and practice would be to heat up the oil or run the engine until you go above 230 degrees F to get rid of the water vapor and burn the deposits prior to the first run of the day. A heater would be the best way and economical since you would not be running the engine and wasting race fuel.