Fan Assisted Oil Cooler Set-Up…?

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Hi!

I’ve been combing through the forum for a while, and whilst there had been a few different topics discussing about Oil Cooler set-ups on FK8, I wonder if anyone had thought of the idea of having a fan-assisted set-up. At first, you may think - why is that necessary? Well, allow me to share my set-up and explain my case:

I drive a RHD, 2020 FK8 Civic Type R GT (UK-Import model). And long story short, I decided that an oil cooler kit would be beneficial since I usually drive my car very hard. (I can elaborate separately)

HKS seems to make the best off-the-shelve design with the most sensible mounting position, hence I went for it. Unfortunately, here comes a problem:

My car does come with Honda Safety Sensing from the factory. And as such, the channel created by the HKS kit’s ducting, of which a large amount of airflow should be flowing through to the oil cooler, is completely blocked by a large Radar Sensor.

Of course, even so, it’s still possible to modify the ducting to fit and run the oil cooler without problems. However, it would mean there’s very little natural air-flow to it, reducing efficiency. The only available natural channel, is the lower 2 square-holes. (Of the 4, beside the bumper garnish).

Without wanting to mess around with the Radar Sensor, and without wanting to sacrifice a side of my fog-lights (Even though it’s possible), the shop’s Mechanic had an idea:

To fit a electric computer fan, to generate more air-flow, and pushing it into the oil cooler. Mounted behind the radar sensor, and as far as possible away from the lower 2 square-holes, to also try and not impede any amount of natural air-flow.

Ideally, it might’ve been better to fit a fan to suck in air from behind the oil cooler instead. Unfortunately, a lack of space prevented that. So after bearing some compromises…

…I now have this really strange Frankenstein-looking set-up that understandably, had bewildered those who’ve seen it.

Sorry if all this seemed…incredibly wild/stupid. But, just thought I’d share a set-up that…I’ve never seen on another car before. And get any feedbacks/opinion from anyone willing to contribute. Positive, negative, or in-between - all are welcome. ??

Honda Civic 10th gen Fan Assisted Oil Cooler Set-Up…? 175DD450-FB3C-4EF2-86FC-B771EC5A6CB4


Honda Civic 10th gen Fan Assisted Oil Cooler Set-Up…? 12079EA3-BEA5-4BE1-8141-88D271DEDC67


Honda Civic 10th gen Fan Assisted Oil Cooler Set-Up…? BC8E901A-3C18-4E52-99F3-BAF68F26E0D0


Honda Civic 10th gen Fan Assisted Oil Cooler Set-Up…? 4020004E-0CAE-4210-82D4-23B0AE4DCD29


Honda Civic 10th gen Fan Assisted Oil Cooler Set-Up…? 985C9A6E-31FE-41B4-81EE-4750AC22514B


Honda Civic 10th gen Fan Assisted Oil Cooler Set-Up…? F447384C-1D61-4617-9AC0-9E93720CEA9B


Honda Civic 10th gen Fan Assisted Oil Cooler Set-Up…? D5EA27F2-D5ED-4472-97C4-9850B66DA237
 

Romeoridgee

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that looks like a fan for a large computer. these oil coolers rely on a lot of air flow. plus the fan is a little far from the cooler, if you look at some that are offered with a fan its mounted directly to the cooler, even our radiator fan(s). since you have the ducting for the center section under the inside corner of your passenger headlight, and have to have the cover on for the radar, it seems like theres no where for the air to come from. maybe cutting out the black section above the white swoosh, and making some sort of ductinging leading right to the cooler would provide better results. very creative idea though, just my input.
 

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I just want to say I love the fact that you used a system chassis fan for an oil cooler on a type R. Even typing that out made me giggle
 

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If possible, make an aluminum shroud to mate to the back of the cooler that has a revision for a slimline style fan and that will pull air through the cooler more efficiently. Then you can wire in a temp switch that is adjustable to kick that fan on at a specified temp. That would be the absolute best way to move more air through the cooler faster
 

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Most oil coolers I've seen mount in front of the radiator. If anything maybe a water sprayer would be a better idea than a PC fan that looks like it's blocking more air than it's giving.
 


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I give A+ for ingenuity and trying to come up with a solution. Always cool to see how people tackle a problem. My concerns would be that fan likely does not move that much air since its meant for computers and like noted above its pretty far away from that cooler. It either needs to be on the cooler or a shroud should be made to get air over the face of the core.

Another option could be to move the core if you can. We run the Sirimoto core because it has the best placement directly behind the grill in a high-pressure area so air goes over it easily.
 

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The best way to figure out if its working is with some good old DAQ. You need to see what RPM it naturally spins at when the car is moving, without any power applied.

If the RPM is less than its max RPM it will help. if its more or equal it does nothing.
 

.grimace

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You should just remove the fog light for track days for more flow. Takes 1-2 minutes.

hard driving on backroads you’ll never overheat unless you’re like takumi over there going hard AF for 10+ minutes

even then its the coolant that overheats well before the oil

our group of fk8 friends has found a secondary radiator to work very well. I need prettier brackets I know

Honda Civic 10th gen Fan Assisted Oil Cooler Set-Up…? 54A012E0-6D88-4151-93CA-D2F070F27C55
 

_silvy

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I'm going to take a guess that this might actually hurt cooling even more. Those PC fans don't move a lot of air normally and that's a lot of surface area being blocked in front of the radiator. Fan is probably going to spin faster from airflow than electrical power. Really cool idea though, no doubt.
 

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water spray will work better than the fan, it doesn't do much after your reach over 30 mph and block some air after that speed. I'll say try to get a water hose from the windshield sprayer that you can control with oem stick and spray at times you like.
 


taiso0019

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I hate pile on what most have already mentioned, but no amount of hard driving on the street will require an oil cooler. Singapore doesn't have many places to drive hard for sustained amounts of time, let alone an actual track unfortunately. However if you want to run it definitely lose the fan and just ensure good ducting (as much as it's possible anyway) is going to the cooler.
 
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Hi, All!

Firstly, I'd just liked to say, I really appreciate all the inputs so far! And yes, whilst I may not know the specifics of the fan, I can roughly tell too that it is...or was...probably some kind of a CPU cooler fan. It was just improvised for my oil-cooler's setup in an attempt to increase it's effiency. (Told ya' it was wild, lol...!)

And yes, I agree...it probably was an idea that proved too ambitious to actually serve it's intended purpose. (I'll elaborate seperately...)

I've also read through all replies and considered all opinions and recomendations. Allow me to share my thoughts in return too...

these oil coolers rely on a lot of air flow. plus the fan is a little far from the cooler, if you look at some that are offered with a fan its mounted directly to the cooler, even our radiator fan(s). since you have the ducting for the center section under the inside corner of your passenger headlight, and have to have the cover on for the radar, it seems like theres no where for the air to come from. maybe cutting out the black section above the white swoosh, and making some sort of ductinging leading right to the cooler would provide better results. very creative idea though, just my input.
In my current case of having the fan infront of the oil cooler, I believe it was already positioned as far and near as possible to the oil cooler already. Any further, requires trimming off even more of the upper sheet ducting, which will just result in having no further material left to properly bolt/mount the fan on in-place. Also, whilst...it may be possible for me to cut out the plastic above the "swoosh" garnish trim and have a custom ducting made to direct air from further above into the oil cooler...I'm afraid, it's not something I would like to attempt out of fear that other blockages might be in the way. If I had US-spec car, which would have the even larger crash bar from factory, it definitely will also be an impossibility. Since part of the entire bulky crash bar, will definitely be in the way. Genuine 2020-Facelift bumper garnishes, isn't cheap (Nearly 300 USD from personal experience, just for a single side), hence...I'm unfortunately reluctant to cut it up. However, I do appreciate the idea!


If possible, make an aluminum shroud to mate to the back of the cooler that has a revision for a slimline style fan and that will pull air through the cooler more efficiently.
I give A+ for ingenuity and trying to come up with a solution. Always cool to see how people tackle a problem. My concerns would be that fan likely does not move that much air since its meant for computers and like noted above its pretty far away from that cooler. It either needs to be on the cooler or a shroud should be made to get air over the face of the core.

Another option could be to move the core if you can. We run the Sirimoto core because it has the best placement directly behind the grill in a high-pressure area so air goes over it easily.
Yes, I believe it is possible to come up with a shroud design for the fan, as it's a good idea! However, I'm not entirely sure if there exist any fabricators local to me who would have the capability and time/will to fabricate one for me incorporating my fan. The reason why I originally didn't wanted to go for an oil cooler set-up that was mounted right behind the front grill, was because whilst I understand that that spot would certainly be very beneficial for sufficient air-flow into the oil cooler, I didn't want to reduce air-flow into my radiator, which will compromise the efficiency of another part that's on the car, I feel. Perhaps, the compromise may still not overshadow the effiency of an oil cooler able to actually get sufficient air-flow? However, the idea of trying to move my current oil cooler core elsewhere, is just gonna completely defeat the purpose of me getting my current HKS kit. Might still be an idea to keep for the future however! But, I'd have to scrap my current kit, and start over with another kit.


The best way to figure out if its working is with some good old DAQ. You need to see what RPM it naturally spins at when the car is moving, without any power applied.

If the RPM is less than its max RPM it will help. if its more or equal it does nothing.

Umm...I agree! But, I'm not sure if I have the resource nor capability to test out and measure the fan's RPM accordingly.

hard driving on backroads you’ll never overheat unless you’re like takumi over there going hard AF for 10+ minutes

even then its the coolant that overheats well before the oil

our group of fk8 friends has found a secondary radiator to work very well. I need prettier brackets I know

54A012E0-6D88-4151-93CA-D2F070F27C55.jpeg
Holy shit, this is...a first for me to see! I've never thought about installing a secondary radiator. I've searched around and...Mishimoto seems to make something similar to this? This is done to further lower coolant temp in an effort to also pull down oil temp? I'm gonna need to learn more about this!

water spray will work better than the fan, it doesn't do much after your reach over 30 mph and block some air after that speed. I'll say try to get a water hose from the windshield sprayer that you can control with oem stick and spray at times you like.
Something similar to an intercooler spray then?

A little more background: So far, I'm still admittedly only monitoring temp readings off the LogR app, which is available on my 2020 car. So I understand that, whilst it may not be the most accurate tool for temp measurements (Many believe LogR app's readings to be slightly inflated), it is all I have to monitor Oil Temps, Oil Pressure, and Water Temps readings, until I invest in getting a proper guage pack with standalone temp-sensors even more accurately, in the future.

What made me have doubts/suspicion on my oil cooler's efficiency to begin with (which includes doubts/suspicion of the assisting-fan's efficiency), is that right after the HKS Oil Cooler Kit is installed, as reflected by the LogR app, neither Oil nor Coolant temps dropped by much at all immediately (2-3 degree cel at best)...even when the fan is running. And after, say, a 5-7 mins session of full-blast driving (Redlining every gear, whilst pushing 1.8 Bars of boost as my car is tuned), as reflected by the LogR app, I was still easily hitting past 120-degree cel of oil temp at the end, and the time it took to reach that kind of hot temperatures wasn't exactly delayed by much either. (Bear in mind, all this is done when ambient temps is around 26-28 degree cel at night...so imagine how much shorter I could drive on full-blast, if it daytime with the average 32-34 degree cel ambient temps instead. Yes, I reside in a country with a hot climate.)

Eventually, I decided to look past the oil cooler and oil temps for a bit, and focused on coolant temps instead. Because I decided to take another approach: I'll bring down the coolant temperature, in a bid to bring down the oil temperature as well. So for this, I installed Spoon's Thermostat to do just that. (Keeping my radiator untouched first. Will change to maybe PWR's in the future too, but for now, since the Thermostat is cheaper to change...)

This 117-USD thermostat, instead, brought a bigger cooling effect than my oil cooler did. Immediately, it dropped the coolant temp by almost 10-degree cel on idle, and with that, pulled my oil temp down by almost 8-degree cel too, on idle. This much cheaper thermostat, in the same 26-28 degree cel ambient temp and conditions, actually allowed me to pull harder for slightly longer (Close to 9/10 mins) till the oil temp inevitably hits 120-degree cel and over, again.

You should just remove the fog light for track days for more flow. Takes 1-2 minutes.
Once again - I sincerely appreciate the inputs, knowledge, experience, and recommendations I've received from everyone on this topic so far. It means a lot to me, truly. I'm still open for more to anyone willing to contribute.

However, given my current situation, looking back into this oil cooler I have - I believe, this might be the most plausible and straightforward thing I can try at the moment. Looking at the size of the foglight and the housing, it seems deleting the foglights, can indeed open up a channel for a considerable amount of natural airflow into my oil cooler. So, eventually when I get around to having the time, I may just delete the entire assisting-fan set-up, delete the foglights, and see if I can get overall better results from it.

Honda Civic 10th gen Fan Assisted Oil Cooler Set-Up…? Inked1_LI


Honda Civic 10th gen Fan Assisted Oil Cooler Set-Up…? Inked2_LI


Honda Civic 10th gen Fan Assisted Oil Cooler Set-Up…? Inked3_LI
 
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I hate pile on what most have already mentioned, but no amount of hard driving on the street will require an oil cooler. Singapore doesn't have many places to drive hard for sustained amounts of time, let alone an actual track unfortunately. However if you want to run it definitely lose the fan and just ensure good ducting (as much as it's possible anyway) is going to the cooler.

You're right! You're the first person to point this out about someone like me living in Singapore! Kinda unexpected but, it's really a legit fact that I cannot deny.

But...without wanting to elaborate too much and definitely not wanting to brag at all (as it's not something I'm actually proud of), let's just say: A certain expressway local to me, from West to East, is 48 KM (30 miles) long. Averaging 100 MPH mostly, with certain stretches being clear to max out as far as the stock gearing can allow (167 MPH for, albeit, around 10-20 seconds only), my car won't last 8-miles before hitting oil temps over 120 degree-cel.

There's a local B-road, that including the distance to return to start, is about 7.5 miles. A single session of hard driving on this road, will also see me hitting oil temps over 120 degree-cel. (Up to 125 was the max I hit once.)

Accross the border into Malaysia, Sepang International Circuit awaits for me. It is 5.543 KM (3.444 mi) long, with 15 sweeping corners and wide straights. Given my current car's condition, especially in broad daylight past morning (When ambients temps should theoretically rise to close to 30 degree cel on a normal sunny day), I don't think I can even complete 2 hot-laps without being forced to pit...either because I back off as I'm fearful of the temps, or shall the car jump itself into limp-mode. Merely only being able to do 2-hotlops, in my opinion, is just embarassing when compared to how much longer other 2.0L Turbo cars out there can go.

Hence, all in, is the reason why I'm somewhat focused on wanting to at least be able to "buy" more laps I can do with this car. Even if, ultimately, I may never find a solution to completely eradicate the overheating issues.

I shall take your advice and try losing the fan and open up a ducting using the fog-light delete method. I appreicate it! Hopefully, it'll better in my case...
 

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Holy shit, this is...a first for me to see! I've never thought about installing a secondary radiator. I've searched around and...Mishimoto seems to make something similar to this? This is done to further lower coolant temp in an effort to also pull down oil temp? I'm gonna need to learn more about this!
Mishimoto does a tiny one hidden back in the engine bay in a totally worthless spot. We took the idea of how they tied in their lines though and instead mounted this much larger one up front. No more AC condensor blocking the flow.

So far it has kept my buddies from overheating his 2-3 tests with it. I am taking mine out on 3/25 and 3/26 both days are 87-90 degrees so we'll know how well it works.
 

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Just a few random comments:

- I agree with the everyone that a computer fan is likely not powerful enough. I was going to suggest FAL, but it seems like their smallest fan is 10 inches, which is too big. But you would want something rugged like this.

https://flex-a-lite.com/electric-fans/12-volt-electric-fans.html?width_estimated=171

- I would have concerns that a computer fan is not weatherproof. It's not made to handle water spray on rainy days like an automotive fan.

- The lower temp Spoon thermostat is not going to help you if you go on the track. If you are driving hard, then both the OEM and Spoon thermostats will be fully open and they will have the exact same result.

- I believe the HKS oil cooler comes with a thermostatically controlled valve, which means you wan't see much cooler temps during normal driving. You will only see the difference under harsh conditions. This is what you want. (Maybe this was already discussed and I missed it.)
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