Heat Exchanger Fabrication

The lead engineer on this project, Dan, plans to test several designs, including an all new heat exchanger design for this project. Exciting stuff! Before we test, we first need to fabricate our test subjects with the help of our expert welder, Mike. We will be creating a small cross-flow oil cooler, a large cross-flow oil cooler, a small dual-pass oil cooler, and a large dual-pass oil cooler.

We began with the cores of our new oil cooler designs. First up was welding the mounting points to the top edges of our cores. We have a pretty cool mounting design for our oil cooler, and we were pretty excited to see it come together.

After fitment was confirmed on our GT, Mike began welding the end tanks onto our oil coolers. We have two types of end tanks which will join with the cores to become the two different style coolers; dual-pass and cross-flow. Dan will be testing both styles to determine which is the better option to cool our Coyote.

After our functional prototypes were completed, it was time to test them for leaks and fit them on the GT. Our leak test method uses a very scientific soap-and-water concoction combined with several spotters looking for bubbles.

Once we were sure that our prototypes were impenetrable fortresses of cooling, we introduced them to the GT.

Both the small and large prototypes fit to our standards and meet our objectives, which included leaving as much room as possible for installing aftermarket heat exchangers behind our oil cooler. To free up as much room as possible, we have aligned the back of our oil cooler with the wiring harness that runs along the crash beam. Take a look at the space we saved the in the next photo, shot from beneath the GT. The arrow indicates the backside of our oil cooler and how it ends evenly with the wiring harness to maximize the space between our cooler and the A/C condenser.

Coming Up!

Time for testing! We will be posting the results of our testing as well as the final oil cooler design, so stay tuned. In the meantime, sound off in the comments below and let us know what you think.

Testing

We installed each version and gave them a chance to show us what they could do in not one, but two arenas of performance. Round 1 Fight!

Contenders:

• 19-Row Mishimoto Oil Cooler
• Small cross-flow bar-and-plate cooler
• Small dual-pass bar-and-plate cooler
• Large cross-flow bar-and-plate cooler
• Large dual-pass bar-and-plate cooler

We hooked up our 19-row cooler to our GT, as well as our all new bar-and-plate coolers, both large and small, and let them duke it out.

After this first round of testing, we could eliminate almost all options. The 19-row cooler (which served as our control) performed nearly identical to our smaller bar-and-plate cooler. In addition, the 19-row falls short of our expectations as far as space saving, so that option is out. Our smaller bar-and-plate cooler left a bit more cooling to be desired, so we eliminated that option as well.

As we discussed in a previous post, we are testing not only bar-and-plate coolers of different sizes, but different styles. We fabricated dual-pass coolers, as well as cross-flow coolers in both our small and large sizes. Testing revealed a large pressure drop with the dual-pass cooler that we did not see with the cross-flow cooler. Because we certainly don’t want low oil pressure, the dual-pass cooler is out as well. Ladies and gentlemen we have a winner! Or do we?

Stock VS. Mishimoto Testing

Our champion had to best one more opponent, the stock liquid-to-liquid cooler, before it could claim its title. Due to space constraints, our sandwich plate does not fit with the stock cooler, so it must be removed to allow our thermostatic sandwich plate to mount up. We need to be sure that our oil cooler provides far superior cooling in comparison to the stock unit; otherwise, it’s back to the drawing board.

Round 2! We saddled up our pony car with the road testing equipment and set out for the open trail. This required that we maintain a constant speed for repeatable testing so we couldn’t coax the coyote too much (unfortunately!).

After our road testing it was clear that the Mishimoto Mustang GT oil cooler beat the stock cooler fair and square, and here are the temperature data plots to prove it.

Mishimoto’s Mustang Oil Cooler

The latest Coyote received a bump in power by way of overhauling the fuel system, but when it comes to cooling the oil, it could still use some improvements. Luckily for us, Ford’s fueling updates didn’t mean a significant change to the overall design of the engine, which means that we didn’t need to run a complete re-test of our oil cooler. We already determined how well our oil cooler performed in our last post, so we just need to focus on the mounting system.

Ford’s latest update to the front end of the Mustang was more than skin deep, which means we needed to design a new mounting and diversion plate suited for the revised front end. With our selection of facelifted Mustangs in the shop, our engineer, Dan, jumped in with our fabrication expert, Mike, to devise an updated mounting plate.

With the bracket completed, all that was left was to mount the remainder of our kit and allow our donor vehicles to reap the benefits of more stable oil temperatures. We again opted to bypass the factory liquid-to-liquid cooler to reduce the stress on the rest of the 5.0’s cooling system. We’ll also only offer a thermostatic option to prevent any risk of overcooling your engine’s oil.

As the Mustang continues to evolve, so will its need for cooling. That’s why we made sure to update our oil cooler kit right along with Ford to keep the oil temps down and this Mustang performing.

Install Guide: