OIL OPERATING TEMP / TRANS OPERATING TEMP

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I recently installed an Edge tuner in hy 2004 F-150 5.4 3V. One of the bonus's to a tuner is it allows you to see things like oil temp and transmission fluid temp.

On a 250 mile highway treck it showed my engine oil around 180 to 194 F and my Transmission fluid temp remained in the upper 140's to lower 150's. Ambient temp was 40's to 50's.

My engine coolant temp was also in the 180's to a high of 196. Does that mean my thermostat is a 190? I always thought it to be a 180 but these number have me thinking a bit...

I'm using Motorcraft Syn Blend 5-20 and Motorcraft filter. What is optimal operating temp for oil?? Same question for trans fluid?
 
Originally Posted By: BISCUT
I recently installed an Edge tuner in hy 2004 F-150 5.4 3V. One of the bonus's to a tuner is it allows you to see things like oil temp and transmission fluid temp.

On a 250 mile highway treck it showed my engine oil around 180 to 194 F and my Transmission fluid temp remained in the upper 140's to lower 150's. Ambient temp was 40's to 50's.

My engine coolant temp was also in the 180's to a high of 196. Does that mean my thermostat is a 190? I always thought it to be a 180 but these number have me thinking a bit...

I'm using Motorcraft Syn Blend 5-20 and Motorcraft filter. What is optimal operating temp for oil?? Same question for trans fluid?


Tuners are nice. And you can read Trans. codes, where an ODII scanner can or cannot.

140 -150 seems to be a baseline with the torque converter locked. But it can climb out under load ( such as an incline) to over 200 when unlocked. If you tow you can stress Mercon V out as it is semi-synthetic. Good safety choice to me would be to have a full synthetic in there for towing.

My other Ford truck had an engine oil temp gauge and it always peaked around at 180*, and after much driving.

It was a higher performance modified 5.0, so I put an engine oil cooler on it to help knock the heat out.
 
I have been using the same equipment, and more, on my '05 F-150HD 5.4L for almost four years now and your readings are perfectly normal given your ambient temps. I can drop some detail on you because I have been keeping records now for all this time.

Generally "Ideal" engine oil temps are in the 160-180F range, where oxidation is low but the oil gets hot enough to bake out contaminants. You won't see running temps that low often (unless it's REALLY cold). Your truck and climate are enough like mine that your normal stabilized range will be 180-200 and the hottest days will get you scratching at 210. If you work the truck very hard in hot weather, you might see more (219 being the highest my truck has seen so far). At the 180-200 range, the bulk of your 5W20 oil is operating in the 30 grade range and the 5.4L oil seems to run pretty cool compared to many other oil temps I have seen.

Coolant temps are also normal. Your truck does not have a coolant temp sensor, but the PCM extrapolates coolant temp from the cylinder head temp sensors and that's what you see both on the OE gauge and the Edge. I added an actual coolant temp gauge with the sender mounted (drilled and tapped for it) under the t-stat (the normal location for a temp sender) and found strong correlation between the Edge readouts and the gauge. The gauge is undampened, so I see the changes a little faster there and can see the thermostat open and close a couple of time during warmup (temp goes up, then drops, then goes up).

Trans Temp: More or less identical to what I see. Around 150-160 is ideal also for ATF for the same reasons as stated above. I have learned that the temp sensor the Edge uses mounts up in the valve body and the PCM uses trans temp to control shifts and converter lockup (your converter won't lock until the PCM sees around 100 degrees). You are not reading bulk temp (as if you had a pan sensor) and you are not reading converter flow (the hottest oil in the trans) but something inbetween. I have a sender and gauge to read converter flow as well as pan temp (bulk oil) which is how I made that determination. Most of the time the numbers are close, but when I run hard with the converter unlocked, I will see that gauge climb rapidly and the other two readouts much more slowly. Does your truck have the tow package? Mine does (9-row cooler) but it's the 8200 GVW truck that also comes with the 10.25 rear axle and 4.10 gears stocl. The lower gears tends to make my trans temp lower than many other F-150s, but since I added 33-inch tires, my overall gearing is equivalent to about 3.85:1 and so the temps went up a little.

The only way you will achieve continually "optimal" temps is with thermostatically regulated oil temps with coolers and such. I think the Ford F150 temps are so close to nominal that the expense of doing so is not justifiable.

GaugohaulicLR.jpg
 
My BMW is at about 235 oil temp. I think you're good. I'd say you do have a 190 thermostat.

Nice setup!
 
Originally Posted By: Coprolite
Jim, that is a nice set up!
Originally Posted By: JHZR2
My BMW is at about 235 oil temp. I think you're good. I'd say you do have a 190 thermostat.

Nice setup!


+3!
 
Originally Posted By: Jim Allen
Originally Posted By: Coprolite
Jim, that is a nice set up!


My name is Jim and I'm a gauge-o-haulic! ( : < )


Ummm, this may be a little off-topic, yeah, but.. how would one go about making their '05 or other year F150 5.4L look like that?

Also, you have the 3-valve-per-cyl engine with the nightmare spark plugs, or no?
 
Originally Posted By: INTJ

140 -150 seems to be a baseline with the torque converter locked. But it can climb out under load ( such as an incline) to over 200 when unlocked.


Makes you appreciate just how over-built the automatics of the 50's thru the mid 70s were (C4 & C6, TH350 & TH400, A904 & A727, etc), because they ran CONTINUOUSLY without the benefit of locking TC to help lower temps. I keep telling myself that one of these days I'm going to stick a trans temp gauge on one of my 60's beasts just to see where it typically runs. I'm guessing its in a range of the coolant temp plus or minus 20 degrees depending on load and ambient temp. Significantly hotter than a modern trans cruising with the TC locked at any rate. And yet they run 200k miles on one or two fluid changes. The downside- those old transmissions are where a sizeable fraction of the fuel you put in the car gets turned to wasted heat, both by the unlocked TC and the oversizing of the clutches and other components to handle the abuse.
 
Originally Posted By: 440Magnum
Originally Posted By: INTJ

140 -150 seems to be a baseline with the torque converter locked. But it can climb out under load ( such as an incline) to over 200 when unlocked.


Makes you appreciate just how over-built the automatics of the 50's thru the mid 70s were (C4 & C6, TH350 & TH400, A904 & A727, etc), because they ran CONTINUOUSLY without the benefit of locking TC to help lower temps. I keep telling myself that one of these days I'm going to stick a trans temp gauge on one of my 60's beasts just to see where it typically runs. I'm guessing its in a range of the coolant temp plus or minus 20 degrees depending on load and ambient temp. Significantly hotter than a modern trans cruising with the TC locked at any rate. And yet they run 200k miles on one or two fluid changes. The downside- those old transmissions are where a sizeable fraction of the fuel you put in the car gets turned to wasted heat, both by the unlocked TC and the oversizing of the clutches and other components to handle the abuse.



Yep, spot on with the fuel economy dive and non-lockers.

I had a C-6 and did some towing. When pulling a Bob Cat skidsteer loader, it could peak out to 260-270 before the cooler. I put an electric fanned trans. cooler to controll this under low speed operation.

It would show near the same range when under normal driving -- somewhere between 140 and 170, depending on the season. In principle, the heat is generated by the un-locked turbine throwing transfluid at the other turbine. There is a bunch of hydrostatic friction from just the 20wt fluid motoring the other impeller-- amazing.

Once you mechanically lock the two turbines together, essentially you're a manual transmission, and this end of the heat is cut way down.

The C-6 was very hard on transmission fluid even in between towing cycles. The fluid was done at 30k. and I would flush out nearly 4 gallons on PM.
 
Originally Posted By: 45ACP


Ummm, this may be a little off-topic, yeah, but.. how would one go about making their '05 or other year F150 5.4L look like that?


Here's how. Performax

Originally Posted By: 45ACP

Also, you have the 3-valve-per-cyl engine with the nightmare spark plugs, or no?


I swapped out to one-piece Champions at 19K miles prophylactically. None broke off. I attribute that to clean living and Top Tier fuel... plus a little technical advice. See here: Spark Plugs


INTJ: My other truck is an '86 F250 4x4 diesel bought nearly new and with a C6. It got about 80K towing miles, much of it at 18,500 GCVW (overhead camper with a 30 foot travel trailer). I have a trans temp gauge permanently mounted and have had temporary engine oil temp gauges installed a different times. The gauge is hooked up to read pan temp (though I have a sensor in the cooler line also) . The C6 runs about 140 on hot days solo (big cooler) but even at 18,500 it never saw much more than 225 at the pan. The few times I had the cooler out line hooked up wasn't when I was towing, but it runs about 50 degrees hotter solo. Engine oil temp peaks at about 185 on that diesel but it's got a built-in oil cooler and holds 10 quarts.
 
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Great information guys. I love Jim's "gage-aholic" line.

Plugs: Mine came out at 64k miles. None broke and replaced with the "improved" Motorcraft plug.
 
Wow. Interesting on the solo 190* trans. temp. I had the gauge installed when I had my non-fanned cooler, so to be accurate, I never knew what the radiator would pull out, so it was likely higher than what I saw.

I recall the fluid wouldn't hold up as well, as it does in my 4r70w trans that I'm driving now. This truck is a bit lighter(4x2). Fluid always looks pretty new and maybe Mercon V plays a part in this too.

And I overdrive over-the- top, you could say, because I'm @ 1600 at cruise, while that C-6 was 2500 at cruise -- everything saw more RPM, thus a 1/3 more miles when comparing the two trans. fluids.

Post Scriptum: looking at your first post gave me incentive to pull the door pillar gauge trigger-- nice.
 
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