High Oil temperature, Concerned the temperature is getting to high too fast . Options

[Ron914]

In preparation and hope that I pass my smog test I want to go on the So. Cal.Toy Drive in my 914 on Saturday (not sure if this is a good idea) .

I need to address what I think might be a high oil temp problem .

After driving around town for 30 minutes the photo shows my oil temperature oil gauge and a actual thermometer reading using a turkey fryer thermometer.

The needle on my console gauge gets very close to the red high mark and sometimes just about to cross into the red .

At this point the turkey thermometer reads ~216 F degrees .

My Dakota Digital head cylinder temperature reads 111C (231F) .

It is almost 80F here today in sunny So Cal. but this seems too high for me . What would be a normal reading for the oil temp gauge?

This is a newly rebuilt motor (less than 300 miles on it).
I did not replace the oil cooler (its original) but it was flushed and was clear.

The baffles are held open by spring tension since the thermostat is not working but I checked they were open by removing the coil and checking through the bolt hole. This should be ok until I get a chance to replace it .

If I pass my smog check tomorrow or Thursday I am hesitant to take the car on a long canyon drive , so not sure if I can attend the toy drive this Saturday.

Any thoughts ?

[Superhawk996]

I’m also going to write this for your benefit despite the people I’m gonna piss off. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/stirthepot.gif)

216F isn’t even remotely close to too hot. Especially for an air cooled engine. Your modern daily driver will easily run 210-220 oil temp if heavily loaded, pulling up an extended grade (ie high load), or extended high speed (high aero load). During testing we wouldn’t even consider aborting at test until oil was well in excess of 250- 300F. Usually, a water pumper will overheat long before oil temperature cases a test to abort. For amusement . . . Go look on the Viper or Corvette forums and see what oil temps they run during a track day.

250F is absolutely zero concern for air cooled. Remember you have heads running at 350F and they are being cooled by oil - it should not be surprising that oil gets hot when washing over hot heads.

Yes, this necessitates reduced oil change intervals (3000 miles would be perfectly adequate) on air cooled engines. My air cooled motorcycles run this hot. We ran at these temperatures long before synthetics were a thing. Synthetics laugh at 250F.

There is a reason the oil temp redline is at 300F (back in the non-synthetic days) by engineers that actually design and test engines for a living vs what someone’s daddy or grand daddy taught them.

Tying to make an air cooled engines run at 180F oil temperature is counter productive.

There I said it (IMG:style_emoticons/default/huh.gif) (IMG:style_emoticons/default/av-943.gif)

[JamesM]

Tying to make an air cooled engines run at 180F oil temperature is counter productive.

Not to mention the oil should be hotter than that anyways.

nothing wrong with 216 at all.