Curious about LS engine performance...

...I have an oil cooler on my car but stock radiator. On a hot day on track, I get high coolant temps but my oil temps are acceptable (270...high but ok).

So am I right in thinking I'll get more hp/tq from getting a bigger radiator on there? Or would I be better served for performance (hp/tq) running straight water to lower the temps just put in a bigger heat exchanger on the oil cooler?

When drag racing I always watched oil temp.

Opinions?

Thanks,

Andy

 

ttt

 

the pcm starts pulling timing when ect is above 230F.
You need to get really high oil temps (>300) before the pcm kicks in.

 

The purpose of the coolant system in an engine is to keep the oil temperature from getting too high and suck away heat from the cylinder walls to keep them from melting. Most everything in the PCM is coolant temp driven...not all but a lot of it. If you get the coolant temp back down, then your oil temp will get down as well. I'm not into dragstering but looking at the larger picture, the radiator is there to "exchange" the heat of the coolant with the air passing through it, therefore cooling off the coolant which will make another pass through the engine to pick up heat again. In dragstering, there's only airflow through there for a few seconds and I don't know about it past that time. The Corvette was not designed for this use on a continual basis. Supplemental cooling or other cooling methods should be considered but they will also cause much larger temperature changes in the engine which will shorten the engine life. Just thoughts...