I think that most of you would agree that the oil coolers on these cars are more for looks than function as most of these cars rarely see any track time or hard enough driving to require additional cooling for the oil. I’m not saying that they don’t work, but that they work too well and can keep the oil from coming up to a good operating temperature.
Of course none of this means that I wouldn’t have one but I did add a thermostatic cooler by-pass to keep things warm enough and (according to Earls) to avoid blowing out the cooler with a high volume of cold oil.
Here’s how it turned out.

Cooler mounted in body



This is my process to make the shrouding for the cooler and radiator. The top piece is taped together file folders ( I didn’t have any nice poster board) to make a rough template. The middle one is thin .019 aluminum I use sometimes with my business, it’s easy to work with and I have lots of it, I also wasn’t sure that I could get it in place without a center seam so this one was the test piece. I trimmed it to fit and then used it as a template for the final one, The bottom one is the final piece, the front and back straight edges are folded over to keep them rigid.





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This photo shows the oil lines from the engine. Oil goes through the filter and then to the thermostatic bypass, if it is less than 180 degrees it just returns to the engine from there.

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If the oil is over 180 degrees it is sent to the cooler and back to the engine.




To be continued…