Red Line 15W50, 1.5k mi OCI, 5.8k mi, C7 Corvette Z06

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All mileage is in kilometers not miles.

Notes from oil slip: "Had oil temps on track go to 295F, want to see how the oil did. There was no oil change, just oil sample top up."

Previous fill was Shell Rotella T6 5W40.

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Yeah, C7 Z06 Corvettes have the reputation for heating up its fluids when driven on track. There are Corvette tuners out there that have fixes to improve cooling system performance.
What track were you at?
How hot was the day?
How long did it take to heat it up?

I see the KV100 is right at the bottom end of the 50-weight range.
 
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I do have an aftermarket cooling kit. However, we're still trying to get the oil cooler sized and positioned right. The high temp was at Lime Rock Park. It's not as long as other tracks, so I'm in lower gears for longer. It was in the high 70s F that day. It took about 15minutes to reach that temperature.
 
Forgot to add, when I change the oil I can't get the last 20% since it's stuck in the oil cooler loop, so all I can do is dilute it.
 
It does go into what appears to be limp mode on shorter tracks. I do feel a loss of power, and I believe it's due to a higher incidence of misfires which I am logging through a OBDII dongle to my phone. It does not broadcast or advertise that it is in any kind of limp mode. It might be related to air in the supercharger coolant loop, so I'm going to get that vacuum filled. It might also be related to the ignition system, so I'll look at that next.
 
Originally Posted by Emperors6
I do have an aftermarket cooling kit. However, we're still trying to get the oil cooler sized and positioned right. The high temp was at Lime Rock Park. It's not as long as other tracks, so I'm in lower gears for longer. It was in the high 70s F that day. It took about 15minutes to reach that temperature.


295F oil temperature on M1 15w50 is not much of a worry as long as the oil pressure is stable. I'd be more worried about misfires. Maybe it's some kind of a thing related to high intake manifold temperatures when the supercharger coolant loop heats up. I have seen test data, and the mixture goes very rich (into the 10's), and spark is very retarded which increases the breakdown voltage for a spark to jump the gap.

Are you running pure water in the supercharger coolant loop? Pure water plus Redline Water Wetter would improve heat transfer and possibly decrease operating temperature over a lapping session. I'm not a fan of air-to-water intercoolers outside of marine and drag race applications. Air-to-air is better for applications demanding high continuous power output. But so far, I haven't seen anybody develop an air-air system for the C7 Z06.
 
This OCI was with RL 15W50, but I will try M1 15W50 as I can get that at Walmart for $11 a 5 quart jug. As for the misfires, I'm going to replace all the spark plugs with the C7 ZR1 plugs (they're one heat range cooler), and replace all the wires. I'll see if that helps. Next, is the larger oil cooler. I need to take it in steps to see what fixes it.

In the CAC loop, I was running 50/50 Dexcool/Water, but I now went down to 30/70 Dexcool/Water with some WaterWetter at 1oz per 1qt of coolant. We also did spend some time bleeding the CAC loop, and I believe we got some air out.
 
Does your car have the Performance Data Recorder? Maybe it logs the coolant, oil, and intake manifold temperatures.
 
Yeah, it does. It logs oil and coolant, it doesn't log IAT. I have IAT logged on my phone through an OBDII dongle. I have all the logs.
 
Originally Posted by Emperors6
Pre supercharger it's like 50C, post supercharger mid to high 70Cs.

Yeah. Both too hot. It would be nice if the pre-supercharger temperature could be kept to ~20F above ambient. That might be something you could do something about if a cold air induction kit is available. Lowering the supercharger inlet temperature would lower the final intake manifold temperature as well, without having to do anything with the intercooling system.
 
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Yap, we bled some air out of the CAC loop, and will switch to a coolant mixture with more water and less coolant for higher heat capacity. Ambient that day was mid to high 30s C.
 
Good stuff.
Great discussion, men.
Thank you.
I feel like I learned something today.
I have used Water Wetter in the past, but not where it is useful like this.
Red Line uses a huge amount of moly, calcium, phosphorus, etc.
You put it to work.
There are racing stories of RL holding up in extremely high temperatures.
 
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