You could have a completely crushed oil line with no obvious deformity to the external side sill. I just went through this with my car and you have to get on the ground and inspect the entire length of your oil lines underneath the car for damage.
Here's what I found. A small amount of oil was making it to my cooler but not enough to get it hot. I could lay my hands right on the cooler as long as I wanted with the oil temp gauge reading 220. Be careful removing the thermostat and don't do what I did.

 

...don'tcha LOVE cast parts...

-Lonnie

 

It's been a while since I posted back in this thread. I checked the lines, and I couldn't find any dents/cracks.

However, all of a sudden, it almost seems as if the car wants to run too cool now? What a turn of events. The normal time it would have taken me to get the car fully warmed up, now only gets it to go slightly past the 2nd line from the bottom.

Even after pushing the car slightly harder, to see if the temps would start to raise quicker, I noticed that it would just cool back down, after a couple of minutes.

 

If your oil thermostat is sticking , that would cause the oil to go hot when its sticking one way and then run cool when its sticking the other way .
Have you looked inside the oil thermostat ?

 

Is that the thermostat element, that some people were mentioning earlier?

If not, then how can I check this?

thanks for the help guys.

-Don

 

Don
The oil thermostat assembly is shown at the top of this page , the broken bits .
The oil thermostat is located just in front of the right rear wheel , its hidden behind the "shark fin".
The oil thermostat sends oil to the oil cooler when the oil gets above the wanted temp .
When the oil is not yet up to temperature , the oil thermostat does not send any oil to the oil cooler .
If the moving part inside the thermostat is hanging up on bit of junk , it will maybe have a hard time moving or be stuck in place .
It can be also very slow moving .
If you take your car in to a shop and ask them to remove and clean the guts of the oil thermostat , that might just get the oil temperature to be more "normal" .
But , its just a maybe .

 

What are you expecting "normal" to be? I believe that the second mark from the bottom is at about 8 o'clock, right? I don't think that is abnormal.

 

Thanks for the help, I'll take a look at it and see what is up.

It may be a bit confusing, because I consider the very bottom line to be the first line, then the second line is the one that is about half a centimeter up from that, and then the 3rd line is the normal operating temperature line.

 

The lowest white line is where it starts. The second white line at about 8:00 is 210 which is normal. If you're getting to the third line at 10:00 this is 250 which is too hot.

 

Related question: What exactly is an acceptable operating temp range for a hot track day based on the marks on the oil temp guage? For example, on the street, mine will rise to the first white line (about 8 o'clock) but on the track pushing it hard on a hot day, it will go up to the last white line (about 10 o'clock), but not above that last white mark and not anywhere near the red zone. Is this normal?

 

In my mind's eye I was forgetting that at the very bottom there are two lines. You are exactly right. I thought about my comment this morning when I was driving to work.

For what it is worth, I don't know if this is normal for everyone, but for me: if the ambient temp is below 70 and I am driving casually, my car runs at about 8 o'clock. If the ambient temp is > 80 and/or I am driving hard my car runs around 9 o'clock but never over 10 o'clock. I think that the 8 o'clock position is too low for the oil thermostat to open as I typically don't have the warm fender when it is running at that level. At 9 o'clock my thermostat is open and the fender is quite warm.

 

If my thermostat is now stuck open, making the car constantly run cooler than normal, that would mean that my fender should feel warm now, right? Since the thermostat should be constantly letting oil up the front oil cooler?

When I autox my car, it went up to a little below the 10 o clock position, but after sitting in the staging area for a minute or two, it cooled back down to the normal temps.

 

That is correct.



A little below 10 O'Clock does not seem too high to me.

 

That's for track temps, not normal everyday temps right?

 

Correct. For 'every day driving' you should be around 9 or below (in my experience). Running hard and/or a hot day, a little higher. I had not thought about it, but I suspect that AutoX results in pretty high temps as the revs are high and the speed is relatively low.