Oil temp gauge (or correlation to water temp)

Does anyone here run an inconspicuous oil temp gauge? If so, show me? Either that, or is there a decent correlation between water temp and oil temp? I have a habit of not "getting on it" til the water temp is pretty much up to 180 but I wonder how that correlates with oil temp in these cars. In my BMWs, water temp leads oil temp by 40-60 deg. F.

The oil temp lags behind the water temp on engine warm up. After my water temp gets to 180 I normally drive about 5 more miles at 3000 RPMs and then assume my oil is up to temp and I can get on it. This is only a guess however. Maybe someone has an oil temp gauge and can confirm this.

+1..I would like to know if there is a sensor we can tap into somehow to display oil temp. If anyone has a solution, please post it up

Oil temp takes a lot longer to get up to temp than water temp. I'm not sure why Porsche did not include an oil temp gauge with our cars (I'd take that any day over the voltage gauge!), but it would be quite useful. I'd be interested to hear from 997 (I think they have an oil temp gauge or was it the 7gt3?) how long they need to drive before they see oil temp come up to temp. On my E30M3, I could drive for 20mins before the oil gauge would even move. So this wasn't even up to "operating temp" for the oil. That's why they say you need nice long drives to get the oil up to the proper temp to "boil" out any moisture in it.

Quotes source post: 10283330

M96 engines were designed with a oil to coolant heat exchanger to speed oil heating to operating temp.Racing M96 engines causes the oil temp to surpass coolant temp.

I have an 07 S Coupe 997 3.8 engine. The 997's have both gauges. My water temperature reaches 175 and the oil temperature has yet to move. It normally takes about three miles of under 3000 rpm driving to get the water temperature to 175 and then about another two miles before the oil temperature to settle in just under 200 on my gauge. When I drive hard the gauge does go just above 200. I am sure the water temperature gauges on the cars are not accurate as mine never gets above 175. I think Porsche makes it that way so we don't worry. At any rate, from my observations, there is quite a time difference from hot water to hot oil. I would not get on it too hard for a bit after reaching optimum water temperature.

Unless under racing conditions, why would one care about the oil temp? Porsche didn't put it in the clusture because there is no reason the driver needs to know.

I don't race my car, but when I participate in DEs, I'd like to know the oil temp to make sure everything is good. Much more useful than the voltage gauge.

DEs are racing conditions so I can see some reason for it but what will be your threshold value for oil temperature? What can you get out of it that a coolant temperature sensor can't show. If the coolant gauge looks normal, so should the engine.

Quotes source post: 10288489

The stock coolant-oil heat exchanger does not have nearly the exchange capacity to keep oil temperatures in line with coolant temperatures, especially when getting on it or in stop and go traffic. Beefing up the coolant system highlights this. To note, with my 3rd radiator, 160o thermostat, and fan hack my coolant temperatures rarely notch above the '8' on the temperature side...while I watch my oil pressures continually drop (in bad traffic or on a long DE day) to a few shades over 1 bar. Simply a symptom of the oil getting hot, thinning out, and dropping pressure. So, to know exactly how thin my oil is getting, I'd love to have an oil temperature gauge, rather than "guesstimating it" via pressure.

I am with you.. we need to find a mod to read oil temp ! Only thing I see available would be the location of the oil pressure sensor. Either replacing it with oil temp instead OR add a T and plug both at that location. unfortunately don't think anybody has ever done it on rennlist I have not seen any oil cooler mod either. Many 996 spec racer seems to say the hardware on the car is fine even for racing and many have raced for a few years without mod. I am worry as well when I see my oil temp drop on DE

Does anyone know how the oil temp is tapped in a 997? Some of them are m96 motors, so perhaps we can tap off of that. The thing is where do you mount the oil temp gauge!?

No need to T off or tap. The other head, where the pressure sensor would go, has a set screw blocking off the port.

Quotes source post: 10290940

Not sure that's a good place to get oil temp. IIRC that oil galley is a dead end. If so there is no oil flow thus the temp reading will not reflect the oil temp say at where the oil is fed to the mains.

I hope someone does that mod I have been waiting for it for months.. but not the skills to do it.

Quotes source post: 10291226

True but my suggestion was based on T-ing off the oil pressure sending unit port.

The mod is ready here now https://rennlist.com/forums/996-foru...mp-sensor.html

Just for reference sake - Durametric will give you the oil temp. I've used it on my 996 but have never done a real world benchmark comparison of coolant temperature rise and oil temperature rise while warming up. I do know that in the garage after warming up, the coolant temperature will be at 180 and the oil temp will be around 195-200. But with Durametric on my laptop, this would not be difficult to do, especially with a passenger.

Quotes source post: 11560566

Joe, in the garage yes but driving on the road is quite different. What I found is the coolant warms up faster than the oil at first but about 10 min or so into the drive (cruising) the oil will catch up and pass the coolant. After that, the oil temp totally depends on how you drive. Cruising around town will be ~200F but if you drive a little more aggressively, the oil can go up to 220F+ pretty quickly. It feels like the temp increases with the load, the more gas you give, the higher the oil temp. I've seen 225F after some 0-60 type of dashes. Must be even higher on the race track where the engine is almost constantly under load.

The cheapest and simplest mod for those that doesn't have an oil temperature gauge is to get a Bluetooth OBD2 Car Diagnostic Scanner. The bluetooth can be pinged to your mobil phone and through 3rd party software you can get all kinds of real-time data from your cars OBD2. Not only that software such as Torque Pro, Torque Lite (free) have graphical interface to give you customized gauges to present the information. It works for both Android and Apple phones.

Quotes source post: 14116442

obd doesn't give oil temp on a porsche. only way to get it is with the porsche or durametric diagnostic tools; info is proprietary, no apps for these yet. so, you have to intercept the proprietary oil temp signal and convert it to something a vdo gauge can read which is what ahsai has done, or go analogue and put a vdo sender on the engine (there is a spare, properly-sized port on the head diagonally opposite the pressure sender location - under the airbox on a boxster, presume opposite corner on a 996). the concern with the vdo sender soln is that it does not always see oil at the top of the head, however, steve on 986forum has logged his durametric temp data against the data from a vdo temp sender on his engine and says that they track quite well - a bit off when the engine is coming up to temp but otherwise good. for gauge location, autometer sells a 9x6-specific kit that mounts on the steering column (replaces the top of the signal stalk housing) and pedro sells a kit that puts gauges in place of one of your dash cubbies. or you can go to ebay and get a DIN-sized faceplate wth 52mm openings for 2-1/16" vdo gauges for cheap - put it in one of your spare DIN slots on the dash.

Quotes source post: 14117147

Anyone done either yet?

Thanks for clarification. My mistake, I was thinking about my BMW which doesn't even have the coolant temperature gauge.