Oil Thermostat

N E body has one screw up?? Was driving to work Fri. The temp started coming up, got pretty hi for the ambient air temp and suddenly took a nose dive. Just like water cooled t'stats going bad. Didn't get real hot after that, but warmer than normal. Me thinks it may be malfunctious, lookin for opinions before I take an oil bath pulling it.
TIA Bill

Bill,

You may consider checking the Oil Temp Sender and or the Gage as well.

When the Temp started to increase, did the Oil Pressure decrease? Usually the Oil Pressure will decrease if the Oil Temp Increases which would indicate the Oil was HOT. How/Why did the Oil get HOT if the Ambient wasn't high!

If it doesn't happen again, its one of those "Stuff Happens" situations.

Good Luck,

Jack Blake

Thanks Jack... The oil pressure is the inverse of the temp reading, as you'd expect. The gauges accuracy is relative - but I'm not sure to what. Have an Idea what the real reading is by having dropped a thermometer down the dipstick hole. It has always run hotter than I'd like (picky) and refuses to cool down till shut off. Put an aux cooler on last year and it seemed to help, but this year it acts like one of the coolers isn't doing much. Like maybe a rats nest in the factory one or a bad t'sat in the aux. I think the t'stat bypasses ~10% of the oil through the cooler all the time. If it weren't functioning, that could account for the prob. The sudden apparent drop in temp for no apparent reason made me suspicious. Think I'll bypass the t'stat temporarily and see what happens. Could be just one of them racin things -'cept I wasn't. Oh Well

Bill, if your engine has flaps and thermostat the thermostat may be going bad or the flaps might have stuck and then opened suddenly?