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TopDownMadness
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- Reaction score
- 25
- Thunderbird Year
- 2004
I ran across the below 'warning' concerning the stock oil cooler. Never spotted this and was looking for comments.
"WARNING ~! - 03+ have the dreaded Mitsubishi designed "aluminum waffle" oil cooler as sadly many Fords do - Oil Filter can literally just fall off as you're driving down the highway. Or, even worse, "aluminum waffle" oil cooler fatigues from compression, cracks internally, coolant contaminates oil & the resulting milkshake wipes out engine bearings.
The stock 'cooler' is pretty sketchy looking (below image)
Some people recommend trashing the thing and using a 'sandwich adaptor' routed to an externally mounted 8-row cooler. Not many spots to mount the thing but should the factory coolers grenade, that would be a bad thing. Thoughts? Anyone swap one over? The posts seem pretty serious about the fix as needed but never show the cooler mounted. Seems an issue 03 and up. 02's are safe.
Sandwich adaptor-
The issue reported on 03-05 where the oil cooler assembly blows off the housing or splits from fatigue.
I'm looking for owners who may have made the modification or have considered the need as valid. Below is a British owner comment typical of many documented:
"It's my understanding 02 has no oil cooler - Its fact that the 03+ aluminum "waffle" cooler is bad, bad news - First introduced by Mitsubishi engineers in the 90's its widely known to crush and fatigue over time as aluminum does resulting in oil filter falling off. Or, it cracks internally and contaminates your oil with Engine Coolant and quickly wipes out engine bearings. - Hence the prudent thing to do is to delete it and fit up an air to fluid cooler - Aftermarket has a SOLID spacer with fittings that takes place of the waffle cooler".
"WARNING ~! - 03+ have the dreaded Mitsubishi designed "aluminum waffle" oil cooler as sadly many Fords do - Oil Filter can literally just fall off as you're driving down the highway. Or, even worse, "aluminum waffle" oil cooler fatigues from compression, cracks internally, coolant contaminates oil & the resulting milkshake wipes out engine bearings.
The stock 'cooler' is pretty sketchy looking (below image)
Some people recommend trashing the thing and using a 'sandwich adaptor' routed to an externally mounted 8-row cooler. Not many spots to mount the thing but should the factory coolers grenade, that would be a bad thing. Thoughts? Anyone swap one over? The posts seem pretty serious about the fix as needed but never show the cooler mounted. Seems an issue 03 and up. 02's are safe.
Sandwich adaptor-
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The issue reported on 03-05 where the oil cooler assembly blows off the housing or splits from fatigue.
I'm looking for owners who may have made the modification or have considered the need as valid. Below is a British owner comment typical of many documented:
"It's my understanding 02 has no oil cooler - Its fact that the 03+ aluminum "waffle" cooler is bad, bad news - First introduced by Mitsubishi engineers in the 90's its widely known to crush and fatigue over time as aluminum does resulting in oil filter falling off. Or, it cracks internally and contaminates your oil with Engine Coolant and quickly wipes out engine bearings. - Hence the prudent thing to do is to delete it and fit up an air to fluid cooler - Aftermarket has a SOLID spacer with fittings that takes place of the waffle cooler".
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