Winter Warm Up - Oil Cooler Rad Blocking
 

Been a while since I posted anything, my rx8 has been running great i just love this car its so amazing, but its time for another winter.

From my experience last winter I find the rotary engine takes longer then I like to warm up and I remember reading that some people like to block their oil cooler rads with something like cardboard to help the engine warm up faster

Does anybody see a problem in doing this?

For what? I never see the reasons to do that and NYC was 15 degrees last winter.

You have thermostats in the oil coolers

Takes a good 8 minutes for it to get to operating temp and make any heat, I just want to speed the process up a little. Our average winter day here in london ontario is -15C, cant stand it

oh really? so it wouldn't even make a difference if I blocked them or not since the thermostat will not allow the oil to flow untill engine is at full operating temperature?

Correct.

The only reason to block off a radiator or oil cooler is if your system over cools, which will always mean that you don't have the right thermostat in place.

The warm air coming out of the vents is a result of heat exchanged from the coolant. From my experience, the water temps increases at a rate comparable to that of any other car I've owned. However, the oil temp does take a significant amount of additional time to reach normal operating temperature (180 F) - but this doesn't impede my ability to get hot air out of the vents.

Perhaps a closer inspection of the heater core is warranted?

our heater core / expander / multiplier / whatever is pure cr@p. Many of us suffer from cold winters. I have to get my water temp in the 180+ range to produce any reasonable heat out my vents and then that's only through one side.

In spring / summer 180F water temp is no problem at all... but in the winter when it's cold out it gives me a good excuse to run her hard.

Mind you, 15 degrees in US is roughy about -8 to -9 Celsius, it's dead cold, what I usually do is, start the car, jump back into the house, back into house for 5 minutes before I hop into the car.

hmm, is mine special? I don't need water to get to 180f before I start sweating in my 8, oh yea she blows both sides ... :lol:

In my experience the oil temps on the RX-8 drop significantly with low ambient temps when cruising on the highway.
For example, on a 5 degree Celsius day at 100km/hr my car holds 72 Celsius oil temp with 85C water temp.

The thermostats in the oil coolers do not have any impact in this realm because they are already fully in bypass but the airflow is still cooling the rads and the hoses enough to impact the oil temp.

Get an oil temperature gauge and block enough airflow to achieve oil temps over 80 Celsius till the weather warms up.