<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Ron:
<FONT face="Comic Sans MS">Perhaps repetitive, but as a summary:
If you drive in cold weather (oil could stay too cold to evaporate off moisture and fuel) and/or like cool A/C in traffic conditions, probably not a good swap. Otherwise absolutely.
Of note is that the new SRT-10 solves the problem of "do I or don't I" buy using a oil to engine coolant heat exchanger. Much better solution as the oil temp can now be regulated rather than just cooled and as an added benefit there is no airflow obstruction added to the radiator. Especially nice if you drive your Viper in the winter as oil will not be overcooled.
Not a Viper exclusive either as my Chrysler minivan with the towing package has a similar oil to coolant heat exchanger.</FONT f>
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My wife's Caddy has a plastic radiator. Inside the radiator is another radiator, for cooling the automatic transmission fluid. After 5 1/2 years, that inner radiator cracked, (you no doubt are familiar with how plastics can get brittle with age). The transmission fluid got contaminated with water/coolant.
Inside the tranny are friction clutches, and the friction material is bonded to the steel plate with, drum roll please, Water soluble glue! The friction plates fell apart, neccessitating a very expensive repair. Too much modular engineering exposes any machine to catastrophic failures.
I like a separate cooler for this reason.
Also, in my opinion, the Cadillac Northstar is a "throw-away" engine. After 5 1/2 years, the Caddy has lost like 85% percent of its value. Its consuming oil now, despite using Mobil 1 since new, and allowing warm-up. To rebuild the top end, valves, valve guides, rings, etc, it costs more than half of what the car is worth. So what good is it to have an engine that requires no tune ups for 100,000 miles, if after that time it needs a rebuild, which costs almost as much as the car is worth? Modern engineering is primarily driven by economics, and in no way represents anything close to quality.
Disclaimer- Your experience may vary.