Ok more fun with graphs!
Let me set the scene. Yesterday I had to drive out to the middle of nowhere Mexico for a freelance shoot at a brewery. It was, perhaps, one of the most beautiful days ever. Temps in the low to mid-70’s Fahrenheit and not a cloud in the sky. The road leading to the middle of nowhere is a fairly undulating “fast” road. Nothing tight at all and it’s mostly high speed. I’d hammer it out and back which would enable me to get a different look at how the cooler performed.
Best laid plans.
An eighth of the way in on the testing road, I ran into construction. This would be the norm for the next 20 miles. It wasn’t just any construction, it went from a two lane to a one lane with extended stop periods while traffic heading the other direction came through. They even set up stoplights but those only added to the time sitting.
Great. Plan out the window. I get to my freelance assignment and find out they forgot to call and cancel as the power went out. Really??? Ok. Beautiful day and I saw some choice spots for car photos. All is not lost.
I decided to see just how hot I could get the transmission. I logged the entire trip back. The log is over 1.6 hours in length. Seriously.
I started out at the brewery. Beautiful building, I’ll use that as a backdrop. I positioned the car and left it running while I got out and shot photos. This lasted for a good half hour.
Once under way, the first half was nice and fast, no traffic, no construction. It was all high speed so there was a lot of airflow. Predictably, I was always running about 66C on the transmission temps, 80 on the clutch and gearbox.
Once I hit the scenic spot, I pulled over, left the log and the car running and proceeded to shoot. I found several locations and never turned the car off.
To my surprise, the temps remained in the cool range, only rising to 74 degrees after an extended period of time. It mostly stayed in the 60 degree Celsius range.
Hitting the road again, I hammered it until I came to the construction zones and invariably, other cars. At each stopping point, I purposely left the car in gear to watch and log the trans/clutch temps to see what they did. Both rose, slowly, to a point. Typically, sitting, car in D, the clutch would rise quickly into the 90 degree C range, but would stop around 94C max. And it’d stay there. Far different from the OEM cooler which would continue to rise into the 100’s. Once moving, the temperatures would all rapidly drop. The manual gear oil would drop in temp with every stop (predictably) so there’s definitely some heat transfer happening between the ATF and MTF side.
Overall, I was expecting temperatures to get much hotter when stopped or idling in D mode. It didn’t happen. It may be due to the Setrab cooler’s size and being able to radiate heat to the surrounding air. When I was shooting, I did not hear the car’s fans running. My typical oil temps were in the 222F range, fairly consistently. The car always runs hotter in mild and cold temps. If I could just get it to run at 206F all the time…I’ll save that for the next mod.
Graphs! This is the entire 1.63 hours. You can click on any of these and make them larger.
Here’s a closeup of the graph color guide.
Here’s a closer view of the entire 1.63 hour graph.
This is when I first started the car back up and was positioning it to take photos at the brewery. Notice the car is mostly at idle (white line on the top graph). The temps come down as the fluid circulates through the cooler and they stay almost completely steady the whole time. The a/c is NOT on.
Here’s a closeup of the “fast” section. Note, white is rpm on top, with white on the bottom being vehicle speed. Like I said, in Mexico. The only downside is it was mostly a 5-7 gear situation. Not a lot of acceleration to redline through all the gears. These are tiny “B” roads as they call them in Europe and quite rough in spots.
Here’s the “scenic” section. I was flying, came upon a few good spots to shoot, pulled over and left the car running.
This is a closer view of the construction section where I had to come to a complete stop, leaving the car in gear.
This is a slightly expanded view of a section of the above graph so you can see more detail. Overall, I’m completely happy with the way the cooler performed without the fan.
