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Our Camaro arrived late on Friday last week. As soon as it rolled off the truck, a swarm of employees surrounded the car, taking turns sitting in the seats, inspecting under the hood, snapping pictures, and wiping slobber from their chins. Alright, maybe not that last one. New development vehicles arrive here pretty frequently, but this one definitely attracted some attention. Being late in the day, we were left with the weekend to ponder and daydream about our turn at taking it for a spin. Before we left for the weekend, our team picked straws to see who would have the privilege of driving it first. One lucky team member took the car home for some break-in driving and splashed some water on the paint to clean it up from a long journey to our facility.

This morning, we slapped on our official "Development" banner and started working out our schedule for development as well as plans for coverage on reviewing this brand new model. Check out a Full gallery of images from the front, back, side,

Any efficient oil cooler setup needs proper regulation if the vehicle is going to see street use. As many know, cold oil can be just as harmful as oil that is overheated. Allowing engine oil to come up to temperature prior to romping on the throttle is a wise move that will extend the life of your GTO LS. Ideally, you would want the oil at operating temperature as soon as the key is turned. This is typically not possible on a first start, but the quicker it arrives at operating temperature the better. This is why we are including a thermostatic option for this kit, and we highly recommend its use in any street car with this kit installed.

Line Route

We found the best route for our oil lines would be to run them across to the driver side of the front bumper area, winding around the radiator support, and eventually mating with our adapter on the oil filter housing. This route provides an ideal line angle coming into the adapter, as well as a good location for our thermostat.

Mishimoto GTO

In our last post, we selected an ideal location to mount our cooler, so now we need to develop and fabricate a set of brackets to rigidly mount our large 25-row heat exchanger. For this task, we have a full fabrication shop and many bright minds at our disposal.

GTO Oil Cooler Mounting Bracket Fabrication

We opted to utilize the upper grille ducts shown in our last post, which should provide ample airflow to the heat exchanger. With more airflow hitting the core, we should see impressive heat transfer.

We began this project by capturing measurements and dimensions from the points where we want to mount within the front grille area. Once complete, we drew up some rough plans for the bracket shape and modeled them in Solidworks. These models were then flattened and printed out in template form.

Pontiac GTO parts templates

Using our shear, bandsaw, and brake, our initial prototype brackets were quickly completed for test fitting.

Prototype bracket

For optimal rigidity, we typically support

We reached out to the forums earlier this month with a request for a GTO owner to lend us his vehicle for product development. The response was substantial. Our inbox quickly filled with messages from enthusiasts willing to help out. We got a similar response last year when we developed an aluminum radiator for the goat. Before jumping into this GTO oil cooler product development, we want to extend a huge thank you to the GTO community for supporting us and for offering recommendations on new projects and product design.

The Test Subject

Our test vehicle came all the way from New York, brought to us by a generous fellow named Tom. This model, a 2004, features a bold Yellow Jacket paint scheme along with a manual transmission. Very nice combination!

Test vehicle for GTO parts development

Although the car is in good shape, inside and out, Tom has big plans that include some restoration work. The plate is quite fitting for this vehicle. Definitely a neat touch.

Test vehicle for GTO parts development

Thanks for taking a look at the process for designing our innovative solution for the Mustang radiator. If you are interested in picking one up for your SN95, check with our vendors for the best available pricing.

Feel free to ask any questions you have about our improved SN95 radiator. I'd love to help out!

Thanks!

Interested in purchasing our Mustang oil cooler? Check out our product page for more information!

Mishimoto Ford Mustang 5.0L Oil Cooler Kit

With one round of successful development and data collection complete, our engineers set out to improve upon the first design. After gathering airflow data for different bumper locations, they decided to move the cooler to the lower bumper opening as opposed to the grille area. Instead of modifying the existing brackets, our team developed a new bracket that would suspend the cooler and attach directly to the bumper support. This new bracket not only brought the cooler to a better location, but it also provided a more rigid, robust mounting system for the large 25-row cooler. This also eliminated the need for four brackets; instead just one cross bar would be needed. Check out a few shots of the prototype!

Oil cooler bracket prototype 2

Oil cooler bracket prototype 2

Once fabricated, the team was very pleased with this new design. The cooler placement

Interested in purchasing our Mustang oil cooler? Check out our product page for more information!

Mishimoto Ford Mustang 5.0L Oil Cooler Kit

With our test vehicle in the shop, our team set to work planning our attack on this Mustang. Our primary goal was to achieve significant temperature decreases. We got this beast in the air and inspected our challenges with the oil sandwich plate location. Our standard and thermostatic sandwich plates use either a ¾-16 or M20 sandwich plate adapter. This component secures the sandwich plate between the block and the oil filter.

Oil sandwich plate exploded

Oil sandwich plate assembled

The images above show the orientation of the sandwich plate and filter on the engine. Oil passes through the filter, then into the sandwich plate. The two ports on the plate will have lines feeding the cooler. Once through the cooler the oil will return to the sandwich plate via the second port and back into the engine. This is a common practice for adding an oil cooler