Remove oil cooler or not??

95Cobra302

Founding Member
Apr 9, 2002
394
3
19
Daytona Beach, FL
Ok, so i've started to clean up the engine bay a little. A few months ago I removed the smog, what a difference that made!! Soon will be the ac whenever I get around to it. I was thinking of the oil cooler and lines. The steel lines have paint that's starting to flake off so it doesn't look to great. So it would look a little better if all that was gone. Would there really be a benefit to keeping the oil cooler on?? What would cooling the oil a little bit do for a street car anyway. Stangbangers who are knowlegeable on the oil cooling stuff can chime in on this too.
 
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I yanked mine awhile back and switched to a 180 Tstat at the same time. Some may say "well the car was designed to have it" but the GT's and 99% of 5.0's didn't come with them to begin with.

I don't have a oil temp gauge so I'm not sure how much it helped/hurt the oil temp. *shrug*
 
If you don't like it, yank it. Labora hit the nail on the head, most 5.0 Mustangs didn't come with them, and you won't see any negative effects from removing it if your cooling system is up to par. Most of the H/C/I or stroker combo guys still aren't running one, and we're not suffering the ill effects of no oil cooler either.
 
I thought that the oil cooler was only really plyable to racing apps like road racing and what not. I could see needing one if your in the High RPM's all the time to keep the oil cool but on the street I don't see it really needing one. Or maybe with a S/C or NOS. I'm thinking about getting one but I want to do road racing and what not.
 
Ok, so i've started to clean up the engine bay a little. A few months ago I removed the smog, what a difference that made!! Soon will be the ac whenever I get around to it. I was thinking of the oil cooler and lines. The steel lines have paint that's starting to flake off so it doesn't look to great. So it would look a little better if all that was gone. Would there really be a benefit to keeping the oil cooler on?? What would cooling the oil a little bit do for a street car anyway. Stangbangers who are knowlegeable on the oil cooling stuff can chime in on this too.

hey if you yank the engine out that would clean the engine bay 10 fold!!!!!

there comes a point where cleaning the engine bay get silly and this is it. Oil coolers help keep temps down and gives your engine longevity. He!! when I dropped my 347 in I put in a engine cooler and tranny cooler with gauges for each and it does make a difference when I drive my car hard.

To each his own no matter how dumb I guess..............
 
hey if you yank the engine out that would clean the engine bay 10 fold!!!!!

there comes a point where cleaning the engine bay get silly and this is it. Oil coolers help keep temps down and gives your engine longevity. He!! when I dropped my 347 in I put in a oil cooler and tranny cooler with gauges for each and it does make a difference when I drive my car hard.

To each his own no matter how dumb I guess..............
 
The stock cobra oil cooler only runs antifreeze to the adapter to cool the oil. I'm sure it could helps if you have a better than stock radiator & lower T stat while the car was run at high rpms for a time period. I ditch mine, definatly looks better, to me anyways.
 
If worried, I'd just get a nice stand-alone stacked-plate cooler and know that you have something effective.

Or if you happen to run synthetic oil, having no cooler of any sort shouldn't matter (even on a fairly heavily driven car).

MHO.
Good luck.
 
Really, you had to change in temp at all??? What did you do to the the coolant tube that the oil cooler line went into? Did you route it into the water pump?? Also do you have a close up pic of that??

no change in temp at all. the cooler can be removed from the block. once u take off the oil filter just remove the adapter underneath and the whole cooler assembly will come off. then u can use a regular ford 1a filter.
 
To each his own. My 2 cents applies to de-valuing the car. When these cars start becoming worth more and more money, you are going to want all of the parts that came from the factory in place. (Ever watch Barrett-Jackson?) I'm sure back ithe late 60's, guys were doing the same thing with the smog parts of their factory hot rod Mustangs. Now, I'll bet they are scratching their heads wondering what they were thinking.
I would keep it on the car, because it's a Cobra. That's just me, though.
 
To each his own. My 2 cents applies to de-valuing the car. When these cars start becoming worth more and more money, you are going to want all of the parts that came from the factory in place. (Ever watch Barrett-Jackson?) I'm sure back ithe late 60's, guys were doing the same thing with the smog parts of their factory hot rod Mustangs. Now, I'll bet they are scratching their heads wondering what they were thinking.
I would keep it on the car, because it's a Cobra. That's just me, though.

Boring, why mod it then. Hell why drive it. Most people don't buy mustangs to moth ball and keep them original.

I removed mine so I could run a short belt and IMO I'll take the better oil filter over any possibly "cooling".
 
I'm not saying "Don't modify it and don't ever drive it." Just raising something that he may consider important, down the road. If nothing else, it might have him the parts up on a shelf in the garage, in case he ever wants them. He asked. I answered.
 
I'm not saying "Don't modify it and don't ever drive it." Just raising something that he may consider important, down the road. If nothing else, it might have him the parts up on a shelf in the garage, in case he ever wants them. He asked. I answered.

i could not agree with you more man...if its any special production i would want as much oem stuff as i could get just so it stays a collector car......seeing as my gt has a 178,000 i dont think anyone is going to call it a collector car lol so i have no problem totally making it my own....i just dont see why limited production car owners want to devalue there cars so much either... just get a gt to mod.. my.02cents also