Does anyone here (in the US) know if they have this oil cooler warmer that mounts between the oil filter and engine block??




Radiator coolant is supposed to circulate inside this piece to heat up the engine oil when its cold and cool it down when it's hot. The thing is, this setup was used on the DE engines and it was useless and all the coolant pipes and such just cluttered the engine bay, added weight/complications and is just more stuff to break or leak.
I just wanted to know if you guys in the US with the HR sedans still have this on your cars because the GCC spec cars still do and I know it was removed from factory on all the VHR engines.

Here's what it looks like on a DE with the oil filter removed >>

 

So I take it no one here does his own oil changes?

 

I just changed my oil, but I don't remember that tube and assembly. After I wiped off the oil drips from the filter off the oil pan, I know it was right up against the pan. Is this a northern car?

But really, is there a fear that it will break? Just take it out when it finally does.

 

Wait. Is your car an automatic? When I did a couple auto to manual swaps on other cars, the autos had tans fluid running through a line that passed through the radiator to warm up the tranny fluid. Maybe Nissan is using the oil instead.

 

yup its automatic but the trans oil lines are getting cooled by the radiator. The sandwich plate in the pics however cool/warm the engine oil using the coolant. Removing this cooler/warmer is actually quite a long process and requires several hoses and pipes to be modified or removed. The DE guys have been doing it for a while now and rather than modifying any of the stock parts I wanted to see if other HR guys don't have it to begin with because I know it was removed from factory on the VHR engines. If they don't have it, then the removal will be much simpler since I can just swap over some of the parts used on the HR engines that never came with it.

The car is gulf spec (middle east) btw.

 

I was changing the oil tonight and remembered this post of yours so i took a pic of my US-spec G (Originally from the NE coast). I hope this helps.

 

Great! thanks a lot Mike!

Now I need to research for parts to do the removal and swap.

 

Ok, so I dug a little deeper into this and found some new stuff

Looking at the Infiniti FSM, Nissan actually designed two versions of this. The first is the one that does not have the oil cooler assembly and this is on the RWD G35's and G37's. The second version is the one that has the assembly and this is on the AWD G's.

Below are snapshots from the FSM showing the difference between the two designs.

This is the RWD version which does not have any oil cooler / warmer.



This AWD version has the cooler / warmer with the oil filter installed in a North-South position.



This is the VQ35DE exploded view. The GCC spec HR and VHR engines are the exact same design, with the oil cooler / warmer assembly at the oil filter and all the associated pipes going to the heater pipe.



The G35's that do not have the oil cooler assembly (RWD HR US-spec) have a similar heater pipe (number 13) that does not include the outlet for the oil cooler and therefore none of the mess outlined in red. I believe the water pipe below that (number 12) does not exist either.

Now to remove this entire mess it looks like a US-spec RWD heater pipe and water pipe (or block off plate) will be needed. The connector bolt for the oil filter also will be required.

I wish Sam at GTM would reply to my PM's as I'm pretty sure he knows what the US-spec G's use as a replacement for the water pipe below the heater pipe.

I looked into the engine bay today and saw the heater pipe in plain view under the driver's side intake tube. The water pipe however I could not locate from the engine bay. I may need to lift the car for this one.

 

Good info dude, can't believe you've gone into so much detail lol

BTW what are you studying? O.o engineering or something??

 

mechanical engineering :P

when i get this mod done i'll make a list of the parts needed and everything.

BTW, if you're planning on installing a GTM SC kit, this removal mod is a must.

 

Ok makes sense now lol

I'll let you be the guinea pig first and then once you have everything smoothed out I'll ship my car over to u

 

OK so after a LOT of googling for pics of any HR block from the passenger side I finally found these.

Here you can see the factory RWD HR heater pipe with the blocked outlet circled in red.




and in this pic you can see the factory block off plate (also circled in red) that seals off the other water outlet. As you can see it's located right under the exhaust port for piston #6. This will be a difficult item to reach cause it's half way between the top and bottom of the engine bay.




I ordered the main heater pipe along with the block off plate from courtesyparts.com a few days ago. Unfortunately I forgot to order the oil filter bolt so I'm gonna have to hit up the dealer for that one. Looking at the bolt dimensions, a connector bolt from a Z32 300ZX should fit but I'm not yet sure.

Anyhow, i'll update again once I get all the parts. Hopefully I can do everything at home, otherwise I may have to visit my garage for this one.

 

how much weight do you expect to save? i'm wondering if this is really worth the effort or if you're better just bypassing it at the source by joining the hoses....

 

it's not really the weight savings I'm interested in, but I guess it always welcome, especially if it's from the front end. I'm going with GTM's SC kit so this will be a must to do since the oil filter as it sits now will be in the way of the SC. Plus I also prefer to remove stupid things like this from the car because they literally serve no purpose other than add weight and complications.

 

i understand, that makes alot more sense. let us know how it goes!