Del.icio.us Digg Reddit Technorati Furl

CA18DET Inline Oil Cooler (UK Factory Oil Cooler)

Jul 30, 2008 Tech (CA18DET 240SX, S13)

Background
I stumbled across this oil cooler while scavenging a local salvage yard for Ford EDIS parts for a megasquirt install.  This particular cooler comes as factory equipment on UK market CA18DET’s.  As with most things Nissan, there are a lot of interchangeable parts and it just so happens that I found one of these oil coolers bolted to a late 80’s Nissan Maxima.  (I forgot to get the VIN number to verify the year and model but I will be going back to the yard soon to get it)  Unlike the JDM spec oil filter mount , the UK inline oil cooler comes with an additional housing attached to the top of the oil filter mount that has two divorced chambers, one for oil and the other for coolant.  This housing cools the engine oil with coolant which will help equalize your coolant and oil temperatures as well as get the oil up to operating temp quicker.  It will also allow the addition of a thermostatic switch before the filter to create a dual stage oil cooling system. (more on this in a follow up article) With that said, I purchased this part from the salvage yard for $5.00 to give it a try and as suspected, the mount patterns were identical between the CA18DET part and the “new” part.

Considerations
This install is a straight forward affair with just a few minor modifications but I would like to note that I run a very minimalist setup so you will more than likely have a lot more lines in the engine bay than I do. Regardless, clean and modify (if necessary) the oil cooler as pictured below and then T into your coolant lines to run coolant through the unit. (If you want to run the simplified coolant path that I run, go here: CA18DET Coolant Mod Number 2 (From 10 Lines to 1))

The oil cooler was pulled from an old Nissan Maxima at the local salvage yard.
The oil cooler is built into the filter mount housing. Coolant flows through the top via the two ports.
The CA18DET oil filter mount (clean) shares the same bolt pattern as the inline cooler mount pulled from salvage. (dirty)

The new inline cooler also includes a very nice place to locate an oil temperature sensor.
Use a can of Gumout and a lot of scrubbing to clean the outide of the housing.
Unscrew the top of the cooling portion to clean the inside.

After removing the filter stud the cooler housing separates from the filter mount. Once again, clean these parts thoroughly inside and out. You don't want any of the old oil / sludge from the donor car to end up in your motor.
Once clean, reassemble the inline cooler to the filter mount. I used a thin bead of black RTV around each seal to ensure no oil leakage.
Using a 3/8" to 1/8" adapter, my oil temperatue probe sits snuggly in the side of the housing.

Since I run a SR20DET flywheel with 200sx starter, I had a few clearance issues with the water lines so I shortened the indicated nipple and then rotated the top of the housing to allow more clearance.
This image shows the inline oil cooler installed inplace of the factory oil filter mount. I used a thin bead of RTV to seal the mount to the block. Notice that the upper cooler portion was rotated to the outside so the coolant lines would be easier to run.
Close up of the inline oil cooler installed on the CA18DET block. The oil filter will install in the same location.


This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 30th, 2008 at 10:57 am and is filed under Tech (CA18DET 240SX, S13). You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.

Comments are closed.