Oil Cooler

Could I have some thoughts as to where to place an external oil cooler?
Thanx -Bill D.

I've heard of a lot of people placing them in the left wheel well.

Has anyone ever heard of the possibility of your oil cooler creating a situation where the oil " cavatates"? I think this means it either doesn't fully flow and creates cold spots or ???
I have asked my mechanic about installing an oil cooler and he keeps steering me away from it.

Bill, The oil cooler on my VS is mounted to the backside of the rear seat back. In the space between the firewall and the seatback. In this position you should use a cooler with a fan attached to it, and stand offs to space the cooler away from the body.A thermostatic controled on off switch works well too. Eddie

VS mounts the cooler between the seat back and firewall as standard. The trade-off for that site is less cooling air when the car is in motion vs. a protected site. No worries about road debris turning your fan TU. There are several manufacturers of coolers in the VW mags. Cavitation is not a problem, these units are pretty bullet-proof with decent hoses and fittings. Experienced hi-po VW mechanics install them all the time with no adverse consequences. Remember that your oil capacity will be increased by the volume of the cooler and hoses. Consider using a temp. switch to insure that the fan only comes on when the oil reaches 180-190 or thereabouts. Too cold oil is also bad for our engines. Regards, Jim

Thanx guys.. The car I bought came with a cooler/fan combo hung behind the rear seat also..I was just concerned about getting enough air thru it
and blowing warm air towards the hole in the rear bulkhead to the engine fan. Its not hooked up so Ill do some experimenting to see how it goes where it is now.

My VS cooler is set up as described in the other posts. In the summer it is great, and the thermostat set-up works fine in all climates. I also had an on/off overide switch hard wired to a hidden toggle under my dash.... redundancy. My cooler system with hoses, and 1 1/2 qt sump adds about 3.5 Qts on top of the normal fill.

Seems to work great after 18 months...

Jim OKC

Paul, if you want to add an external auxilliary cooler get a MOCAL spin-on filter adapter. The MOCAL has an internal thermostat that begins to open at around 160 F to the extra cooler and is fully open at about 190 F. I think there is always a little "bleed" thru the MOCAL; just enough to keep the hoses and cooler primed. The adapter is tapped for inlet/outlet fittings, attaches to your regular filter adapter, then the fliter screws onto the MOCAL unit.

Mount on the left side of the transaxle and wire a 12V cooler fan to suck thru instead of blow thru (more efficient). You can wire the fan to a thermostatically controlled switch or a toggle switch.

Art Thraen (and maybe aircooled.net) has the MOCALS; Art's email is ACEVW@aol.com.

Thanks George, I'll look into the Mocal unit...I'd just feel better knowing I have some extra chill goin' on with the thrill!

I put in an oil cooler from a Mazda RX7 at the front, a Mocal thermo at rear and stainless braided lines. The Thermo opens up, the lines are hot and so is the cooler where the lines go in and out but the rest of the cooler is cool...or cold. Is it possible that the oil is not flowing through the cooler??