Anyone seen an oil cooler set up put in the front fender forward of the wheel alla 911 Carrera style? Thinking of this for my 2.7 conversion on a narrow body. Pics would be really nice

Great idea..but how would you get enough air flow through it ?

How does it get air on a 911?

thermoswitch controlled fan...

I was thinking that there should be close to the same amount of air moving around up there as a 911 so it should work. I don't really want to cut and weld in the nose like a GT.

Click to view attachment Carrera style cooler

Click to view attachment This would be fun. A man can dream can't he?

the fan would help with existing wheel well air...
but a 911 has removeable front fenders and the turn signals allow air to pass into the fender well

there is a lot more through air on a 911
still a fan and front cooler would help, but I doubt it would be more effective than a rear cooler

it would be more complicated and expensive (bad) but also move a tiny bit of weight forward (good)

brant

I'm not exactly clear on your statement about the "removable front fenders". What difference can that possibly make? They don't move off clearing a path for the air. Or do they? As for the turn signals, they're solid plastic lenses, making the passage of air problematic. Early cars had small horn grilles, but few early cars had front coolers. As for the fans, they didn't appear until the late '80s.

The Cap'n

The 911 has a much more open area behind the front headlight than the 914 does, and so I believe there is more airflow. On mine, I seem to remember that there was also a small notch in the front bumper to provide some airflow as well.

The coolers themselves went through several versions. The early ones were just a simple loop (often called the trombone cooler) that allowed the oil to flow back through the lines back to the engine. However, the lines themselves provided surface area for cooling as well. Then Porsche went to the radiator style cooler, and finally added a fan to pull additional air through the cooler. In addition, there were aftermarket kits (Turbotrol by Lemke Design) that added a cooler to the early cars that did not have coolers (mid 70s if I remember correctly).

Though it does require some fabrication, I think that a front cooler using the GT style front bumper and valance is the easiest and most effective location for a cooler in a 914. It's really not all that hard to run the lines and put in the front cooler, the parts are readily available.

........Just by having oil lines running to the front , they alone will act as an oil cooler,and then with an oil cooler, with a forced air blower, this will be an effective engine oil cooling system. You will need some fine mesh stainless steel screen on the front and back side of this setup to protect the oil cooler from rocks, and road crud. I recommend aero-quip for the oil lines. Keep them seperated. It will dissipate heat, provide excellant abrasion protection, and will not be subject to cracking from vibration.

Actually, running some metal cooler lines along the chassis would dissipate heat better than the aeroquip lines, but are certainly harder to fabricate. Since these are usually hidden behind the rocker panels, or run inside of the chassis, it probably wouldn't make a whole lot of difference.

My take is you would have a fair bit of cool air from the spinning action of the wheel coupled by turbulence of the airflow over/under the car.
When you drive in rain isn't a pile of water streaming out from the fenders?
Wouldn't it be the same (but invisible) for air flow?


Wouldn't the rear cooler (not talking stock cooler) have a lot more warm air surrounding it as apposed to a cooler in the front fender?


If you had a custom air dam couldn't you duct some extra air into the fender from the dam?

I'm sure it can be done, maybe move the horns and route air through the fog-light grills to it.

I know the 911 SC guys don't have a lot of cooling and their tiny scoop mod helps a lot.

My '74 911 has the trombone cooler in the front fender, no radiator. I've read it's the lines running to the front and back that provided most of the cooling. Porsche didn't add a radiator until the later years, 80s?

Actually, the radiator style front cooler came several years before the trombone style. In fact, it was available as an option for folks who didn't think the trombone provided enough cooling.

The Cap'n

For what it's worth, we ran two of those on the 911 race car for a short while to see if we could get away with it. And that was with the headlight buckets re-purposed as air intakes.
Didn't work very well, so we went back to a front mounted cooler.
Then again, the car has a warmed over 3.2L engine ...


For a street car, as long as you keep the stock cooler on the engine, you should be fine with those ...

I didn't want to hack up my car so I put a thermostatted fan and cooler in place of the battery. With a 3.2 my 914 runs cooler than my 3.0 911 with trombone. Highest I've seen in the 914 is 210 vs 225 in the 911. Probably not suitable for a race car. The cooler is ~ 6" x 10". Major pita for newbie.

How are you getting fresh air (cooler air) to the Oil Cooler in that location. I know you have a fan, but it seems that would just be moving around warm air.

I use a GT lid. Figured I'd arrange some ducting if too hot, but it seems to be ok as is.

Cool idea, any pics?
I'll just keep my under rear trunk location, but always good to see/hear more ideas.

I posted 1 pic on a recent oil cooler thread. I'm at work and should be Maybe put up some pics later.

I posted this set-up done by Henry Schmidt a while back.

This is what High Performance House does for his oil coolers. But, I always wondered about sucking the hot air in from the cooler; is that a problem?

There is a whole thread about that particular car above going through all the pros and cons and more.

I don't think we have to re-hash 20 pages of that again, do we?

And yes, the search works just fine ...

"+Henry +Schmidt"

http://www.914world.com/bbs2/index.php?sho...=Henry++Schmidt

And from the looks of it, you posted the exact same reply in that thread just two months ago ...

oops...

Never seems to work that great for me, often find things faster here by doing a google search.

I tried it, it didn't work as well (on a racecar often in the desert) as I expected. I didn't have the engine mounted oil cooler. I installed a ducted F cooler and it never got past the middle of the gauge again.

Only later models. I have a "Jail bar" cooler in my 911. No fan.

A couple of things to consider, all the vintage race cars I remember racing against had the external cooler in the front trunk with ducting so the hot air can come out underneath. I have seen a couple of 4 cylinder cars try coolers elseware but that never lasted. For street or auto-x use it is another matter entirely where you need to worry more about protecting the cooler from stones and all the junk that comes up from the roadway.

The biggest reason that the front fender idea won't work on a 914 is that the air coming off the tire is actually going forward fast enough due to the small space under there that no air can get in. Nearly the same happens in the rear and to prove the point, squirt some of that expanding foam stuff in there and take a good hard drive and then look to see what the heck is stuffed in the foam. You'll be shocked.

You are correct and that's what I was thinking in my head but failed to put in my original posting.. The guys that run their 911s during track days have an option to remove the right turn signal and add a scoop there for additional air flow.. not to mention- good luck fitting the Carrera cooler up in there...ya I though of that in the late 80's

I can't imagine that it is a matter of fender volume but of air flow. IMO only. The 911 had coolers up in the fender for many years, if it was a "bad idea" you'd think it would have gone away quick like the 1972 external oil tank door. As for stuff flying off the wheel that would be easily solved as in the Carrera. I was hopeing that someone was running this set up so I could see if it was worth the work. Lots of very smart and creative people on this forum, thanks for all the input and keep it coming.

Any idea what the oil flow rate is or the length of tubing? And people usually use 1/2" or 3/4" tubing?

I do this professionally (well, not for cars) and to avoid running finite element analysis all the time, built a program for determining convective heat transfer in flowing systems. The original goal was to understand required line heater and heat exchanger sizing but it is applicable to the given problem.

If anyone is interested and can provide the above details, I can do a quick calculation assuming stagnant ambient air for the total heat loss in a trombone system.

Actually, a radiator probably wouldn't be too difficult to add so if anyone has any details about the later 911 cooler I can probably make a few program modifications and run that as well.

Most people use the 3/4 inch (though I've been told that 1" is probably better) braided hose. Don't know how much heat transfers through the hose compared with a metal tube, but I imagine that it's a lot less.

As far as room in the fender well, remember that a 911 is quite open in the front fender area as the headlight is mounted in that space. The 914 has a narrow area in front of the wheel as the headlight mechanism takes up that space and is enclosed in the front trunk area, leaving just a narrow space in front of the tire.

I don't believe there is enough room for a radiator-type cooler in a 914 fender.

Maybe someone should make a trombone for a 914 fender.

Or how about a brass jailbar cooler?

That's the one I have in my 911. Too wide.