44. Gearbox Oil Cooler

To give the gearbox the best possible chance of surviving we decided to sort a gearbox oil cooler out, a little more involved compared to an engine oil cooler unfortunately. Gearbox oil temps creep past 125 degrees after 30-40 minutes so towards the end of the race you either back off a little of hope for the best with high temps, so surely can only be a good thing to bring the temps down to 110-120? 

As we already have the Laminova water heat exchanger engine oil cooler we wanted to stick with the same system. Theres a kit which combines a 92mm and 182mm core length unit. However, this was out of stock and I am rather impatient so made our own.

By cutting the pipe off the inlet fitting and sandwiching two of them together with some gasket paper you end up with a combined unit. Also need to run a drill down the smaller extrusion body to allow the long cap head bolts to go all the way through the 92mm core body.

Modified the existing laminova bracket to move the unit along to keep the outlet in the same place. 

Not pretty but does the job. By gaining the extra 20-25mm it means the outlet is perfectly lined up with the outlet of the radiator. A 32mm 90 degree silicone hose will do the trick to connect the two up.

The more complicated part is dealing with the oil. Need a bottom drain out of the gearbox, through a filter (to protect pump), external oil pump, through the oil cooler and back into the gearbox.

Bottom drain out the gearbox. Rather tight so used a banjo fitting with a 45 degree AN6 fitting. Needed to cut part of the gearbox off to gain some extra clearance.

Attached the filter and pump onto the PMS top gearbox mount so the pump and filter can all be attached to the engine/gearbox before going into the car. Was using an old gearbox casing (the original cracked box from a few years back) for mocking up.

Bit of a combination of hardline to save spare and flexible lines at the front for some ease and it was all connected up and looked pretty neat.

We had a trackday booked at croft to check the car was all happy again after anglesey and to see how the cooler performed before our next race at brands hatch. Thankfully the car this time fired straight up after remembering to replace the start motor dowel!