[T3] 73 T-3 oil temp?

William Jahn willjahn975 at gmail.com
Sun Sep 5 19:52:44 PDT 2021


I've been using SAE 40 Valvoline since it gets pretty hot here. I have the
VDO temp sensor in the sump plate in place of the drain plug . I've read
from a few places that installing one in the pressure relief  port does a
better job . The tests were done with a candy thermometer down the oil
filler pipe and they read the same. I still realize these gauges and
senders are not real accurate. The engine does not have more than 45k miles
on it since I rebuilt it.

 The only thing that makes sense to me is to be idle on a really hot day
for a good hour. The cooling fan is not moving enough air simply because
once the rpm's were up it cooled down pretty fast.

 I've never had that happen before. Drove it today and it was still pretty
hot 91F. When I started it the oil pressure was 50 PSI. I drove a 1/2 mile
and by that time the oil temp was just maybe 130F and the pressure was 40
PSI . When the temp is at 180F the gauge will read 15 to 20 PSI at idle. I
drove to Costco 6 miles one way and the oil temp was a bit above 180F then
on the way back there was a parade I didn't know about and just to get back
to a highway I could get home on traffic was so backed up most of the time
was spent sitting at idle and with two lanes of cars side by side bumper to
bumper I'm sure the air temp was a good deal hotter than 94F in fact by
that time once I got home it was 97F.

On Sun, Sep 5, 2021 at 7:23 PM Keith Park <topnotch at nycap.rr.com> wrote:

> Quite a few varibles, what is your oil viscosity?  Oil light with 10W30 is
> not as bad as with 25W50,
> Still, its an indication of a worn engine, but not necessarily worn out.
> The sender is also part of the equation, the good german ones come on at
> 5PSI,
> The cheap ones don’t come on till there is virtually no pressure.
>
> When the engine was new, the idle with 30wt on a hot day at about 12psi.
>
> 180 oil temp is cool
> 220 is starting to get warm
> 230 its getting warmer
> 240 its time to back off a bit, that’s hot, although it will tolerate that
> for some time with good oil, but these are
> OIL temps, not the temp of the block, or the cooler, which is what you get
> with a sender screwed into anything..  its heat sunk on the block
> And is 20-30 degree's cooler than the actual oil around it.
>
> Keith
>
>
> Topnotch Restorations
> topnotch at nycap.rr.com
> http://www.topnotchresto.com
> 71 Squareback  “Hothe”
> 65 Notchback  “El Baja Rojo”
> 93 RX7  “Redstur”
> 13 Subaru Outback "Blendin"
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: type3-vwtype3.org <type3-vwtype3.org-bounces at lists.vwtype3.org> On
> Behalf Of William Jahn
> Sent: Sunday, September 5, 2021 12:52 PM
> To: type3 at vwtype3.org
> Subject: [T3] 73 T-3 oil temp?
>
> I just have VDO gauges oil pressure and oil temp. I know they are not dead
> accurate . Yesterday I got stuck in traffic because of a parade . The oil
> temps driving to my destination never got over 180F . Yet on the way back I
> was stuck in traffic barely moving for over an hour and the oil temp read
> just under 220 F the oil light would go on at idle , it was 94 F air temp .
> If I put the auto trans in neutral the oil light would go out . I checked
> the oil level later and was down 1/2 quart . Once I was able to start
> moving
> the oil temps dropped .
>
>  My question is since at idle the cooling fan is not moving much air plus
> the 94 F was probably higher because of all the traffic other cars generate
> heat.
>
>  I've never had this happen before being stuck just the engine idling for
> so
> long. I've had this oil light on after a freeway run on a hot day came to a
> stop the oil light would be on then as soon as I hit the throttle it went
> out.
>
>  Is it just that the cooling fan at idle is running slow the reason the oil
> temp would climb? Because the temps did drop back down to about  190F once
> I
> was moving yet I didn't get to drive far enough to cool it back down to
> 180 F where it normally is. I would also place it neutral when this
> happened
> to get not only the voltage to stay up it's 1,000 RPM in neutral and 850
> RPM
> in drive plus hoping the extra RPM would help bring the temps down. It
> didn't, I had to be moving at least 35 MPH and kept it in 2nd gear so the
> RPM's were about 2400 RPM.
>
> William
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