Today was the day to drain the oil and install the oil cooler adapter
on Sarah (my TR-4A). If that went well, I was going to drop the sump
and replace the leaky gasket, too.
No gasket replacement.
There are two sorts of oil cooler adapters available: one that goes
between the filter head and filter and one that goes between the block
and the filter head. The former is preferred by some folks because it
allows the pressure relief valve to operate before the oil hits the oil
cooler, so you minimize the chance of rupturing the cooler with high
pressure thick cold oil. A quick survey showed that no one I knew had
installed one of these, so I thought I'd give it a whirl.
Apparently Mocal, the manufacturer of this adapter, and Flotec, the
manufacturer of the spin-on adapter I've been using for the past
several years, have never talked. Their parts aren't compatible.
It's Mocal's fault, actually: they don't properly export the profile of
the filter head to the cannister (if you will). That is - the filter
head presents a fairly deep groove. This groove gets an oring, and the
cannister presses against it and seals. Both the Mocal and Flotec units
have nice deep lips to fit into this groove, and an inner oring to seal
at the center fitting.
But the back end of the Mocal unit is flat. There's an oring, but the
groove is just as deep as the ring. So when the Flotec unit presses
against it, the inner oring didn't even come close to sealing.
I fixed it, of course - I chucked the flotec unit up on the lathe and trimmed
its lip. It probably won't work without the mocal unit any more, but that's OK
by me; I consider the oil cooler a permanent installation (once I get it done,
that is). But having to make this sort of modification is a nuisance.
So, fair warning - if you go for this sort of arrangement, you should probably
buy the oil cooler and spin-on adapters at the same time from the same place,
and make sure they believe that they work together...
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