Porsche 911 Oil Cooling System Teardown
The next mechanical system to fall to my Rage Against the Greasy Machine was the external oil cooling system.
The goal was to remove the entire thing. This way I could clean everything underneath it, rebuild the external thermostat, clean the oil tank, and maybe upgrade my cooler. But most importantly I needed to make sure no existing garbage in the lines would run through my fresh engine’s oiling system.
I started at the rear near the oil tank. This oil tank hose looks easy to get to…
…this external thermostat does not!
This prompted me to drop the hard lines assembled with the thermostat so I could disassemble everything outside of the car with lots of room.
This tank hose came off.
All the hard line mounting brackets came off next. This one in the rear wheel well plus all the ones under the passenger rocker.
This left the rear oil lines hanging as shown.
The trombone oil cooler kind of hung up inside the front wheel well.
The external thermostat also got hung up in rear wheel well.
Its all kind of hung up because its a rigid assembly and you cant flex anything out of the way. There was no easy way to finagle it out.
In the end I disconnected my sad trombone and the lines all came out easily afterwards.
I disconnected all the mounting hardware and extra stuff on the engine compartment side of the oil tank and it came out.
Look how much oil was still in the lines and trombone after I removed them. I ruined the shoes I was wearing at the time with a nice big splash of old oil.
Lets see how successful we are at removing these lines on the floor. PB blaster left to soak in the threads over several days + heat + patience was the name of the game.
I only managed to get one off on the floor. Off to the vise we went. You cant tell in this photo but the remaining hard line was dangling off to the right and sitting on another table. It was a bit difficult to maneuver it in my limited space but it worked out.
More PB blaster + more heat + more patience.
::Liberty bell clanging::
I haven’t had much seat time in these cars to know, but apparently the trombone oil cooler does a poor job of keeping the engine oil cool in a perpetually warm climate such as Southern California.
So I went ahead and bought this one. A European-market 28-tube brass cooler that I think was used for 1-2 years tops after the trombone cooler and before the Carrera cooler with the fan.
This thing is an absolute unit. It is heavily built and looks like it should have no problem holding up in the harsh environment of the front right wheel well.
I chose this unit because apparently they are great at slow speed and in traffic. Since I sit in a ton of traffic and the entire city of LA sits between me and the canyons, I decided I would give it a shot. I could always upgrade to the Carrera one down the line if this one was not up to the task.
Then I took apart my external thermostat.
I tried making several tools to engage the slot in the caps and loosen them. All of them failed. I then went to the tried-and-true pipe wrench on the cap OD and carefully tap-tap-tapped them both off with a rubber mallet. I left pipe wrench marks on the caps but thats ok because I will be replacing the caps with something much nicer.
This is where I reminded myself how lucky I am to live in the climate that I do. These threaded connections were all stuck due to old age but there was no corrosion due to road salt or harsh winter climates. No threads were damaged anywhere.
Then I stripped my oil tank to evaluate it.
I found this poor abandoned oil level sender inside.
Its living conditions were unbelievable.
I was planning on DIY cleaning this thing but after seeing the inside and learning that there are screens and other features in there that would make cleaning very difficult I decided to leave it to the pros. I dropped off both the cooler and tank at Pacific Oil Coolers, the same place that refurbished my engine oil cooler a while back.
I got to work scrubbing everything else clean with Purple Power degreaser and a garden hose.
Next time Ill cover putting this oil cooling system back together.