I’m looking to use this ‘92 Z28 engine oil cooler on my ‘87 IROC. A couple of questions:

1. Is there supposed to be an O-ring or gasket between the cooler housing and block? I removed it from the engine, and there was nothing. It had also been leaking.

2. What do the two coolant hoses hook up to? A junction Y?

Thanks, Mike

 

Isn't it in reality, more of an oil heater ?

Paging Mr. Wizard to the white courtesy phone...

 

I figured it out. The long hose goes to the radiator. The short hose goes to the hard line near the passenger frame rail. 😎

Now, is there supposed to be an O-ring or gasket between the cooler housing and engine block?

 

That's the 91.5-92 style oil heater/cooler, or more accurately a heat exchanger. It works both ways, whichever is cooler (oil or water) will "cool" the other, the warmer of the too will exchange it's heat to the other. Except in limited 'cloning' endeavors, I probably wouldn't add it to a car that didn't have it.

I'm not intimately familiar with that setup. I'd have to look it up on one of the GM dealership websites and look at the diagrams. Look on Google for GMpartsgiant and look for the oil cooler diagram on their system. I'd expect there's a seal of some kind, probably an O-ring or a composite aluminum/rubber seal like you'll see on V6 fuel rails, or A/C lines, etc.

 

It uses an o-ring/gasket similar to the oil filter o-ring/gasket.

 

Thanks. I was able to find a schematic and order the O-ring and rubber crush washers.

 

I had it. I removed it as a had a pinhole in the metal lines and didnt want to fix something that will eventually break from somewhere else. I then discovered that the engine run cooler without it.

Conclusion. It is meant to heat the oil faster in very cold weather similar to passing coolant across the throttle body to unfreeze the butterflies.

If you really need to cool engine oil, get a proper air to oil cooler.

 

Say I was wondering I got a 92 Z28 5.7 TPI with the oil cooling / heating lines how hard is it to do away with it.

 

Take it apart, replace the bolts (#2 in the diagram) with regular bolts, spin on your filter. It's falling off a log easy.

 

If you use quality synthetic engine oil, you don't need that heat exchanger and it's silly plumbing. Honestly it's a waste of time.

GD