Quote:
Originally Posted by tortuga
So reading all the literature about how the oil Temp should really be run above waters' boiling point so as to burn off condensation, and acids formed by it and combustion products sneaking by the rings, made lots of sense to me. |
The SAE literature, and the engine engineering literature, does
NOT say you have to have your
oil temperature gauge up over 212 degrees to burn off moisture and contaminants. The only people that write that are forum guys that don't realize that the temperature of the
oil on the back of your piston is a couple of hundred degrees
higher than what your oil gauge is showing. To lower the wear on your engine, the literature is clear -- have everything run at around 185 degrees or so. If you drive your Cobra for an hour, and the engine coolant gauge and the oil temperature gauge both read 185, then that's about as perfect as you're going to get. And if you have any doubts at all, use a vacuum pump and pull a sample of oil out of your pan and ship it off to the oil lab for an analysis. An analysis will tell you if you have any moisture or contaminants in there.