Oil temperature indicator (who cares about water?)

Basically I find it odd that a car like a 911 bothers with a water temperature guage, I mean .. who cares? However, I would love a temperature indicator for when oil is up to temperature (for obvious reasons). Water temp: Ok it has a guage but i would rather have a warming light if it goes over average, I don't care which level of warmup the water is at. Oil temp: I would really love a green light for "up-to-temp", and a red light for "over temp". My real question in this post is does someone have a really good video/instruction for the "up-to-temp" light? I did search (disarming usual comments) but all i found was a forum (somewhere) suggesting that the standard oil sender does indeed send temp but it's unused .. be nice to have someone with the necessary technical abilities to offer a solution.

Your oil pressure gauge tells you when your oil is up to temp.

Hmmm, I like everything you post Alex but, not convinced tbh. I agree that it gives an indication but it fluctuates massively with revs so i don't see it as a reasonable indicator.

Once your oil is thin enough for the pressure to be dropping towards 2bar at idle. It's hot enough.

Like this? MC

Once your idle oil pressure is stable your oil is up to temp; if it drops below then the oil is getting too hot; if it's high then it's still cold. Oil temp is just a proxy for viscosity, you're getting the important information from the pressure gauge. How accurate it is however is a separate matter...

Surely oil temperature will follow coolant temperature more or less though? By the time your coolant is halfway, the oil will be warm enough.

No. Oil temperature lags coolant temperature by some what. Coolant temperature stabilises before oil is up to temperature. MC

I've always been a fan of warming an engine before putting it under any load. Reading the 996 owners manual, on page 56, it tells you to "Do not warm up the engine when stationary, drive off immediately. Avoid high revolutions and full throttle until the engine has reached operating temperature" This goes against all I know about other engines like my 2 stroke road and race bikes, but maybe it's a boxer engined thing, due to horizontal gravity forces?

I think the point is you only put very light load on it until it's warmed through. They generally say don't warm up before driving off to stop people letting it sit at idle to warm up where you have low water and oil flow. If you sit and vary the throttle/rpm above idle like you would race bike then stationary warm up is fine. But the general public won't do this.

You can have an oil temperature gauge if you want one. There is a thread on here from some years ago where an electronics genius accessed the existing oil temperature signal and converted the it to display on a gauge. Way beyond my capabilities so I went with a very analogue method. ( I'm pretty sure I posted it on here years ago but I cant locate it now) Briefly I bought a VDO oil temp gauge kit which is a good match for the existing instrumentation and fitted the sensor in the sump by simply removing the bottom plate and drilling a suitable dia hole in a flat area of the sump wall. My local machine shop made up a fitting which was bolted through the hole with suitable sealing washers and which had an ID to take the sensor. Wiring back to the dash to pick up power and find a suitable mounting position. Works well but always reads a lower temp than I would expect, possibly because of the sensor location. Gentle driving normally 60 - 70 C Highest Iv'e seen is 90 in Spain going up mountains. Not really necessary if you are sensible with warming up but nice to have!

I don't think so, I've had sportsbikes all my life and a few two smokes, warm them up driving at low revs then once fully warm do what you like, no differnence to cars at all. With the old two smokes they don't run too well when cold anyway so giving them beans cold would just initial a UK wide fog alert

You should never let any engine sit and idle from cold. Start it up and start moving.

https://rennlist.com/forums/996-forum/827720-oil-temp-gauge-using-the-built-in-oil-temp-sensor.html

I made myself a copy of that and ran it in my C4 for 12~18 months. I didn't want to press on until the oil temp got to at least 80°c. If the car was driven from the garage I found that pretty consistently it takes around 10 minutes for the water to get to 80°c, and the oil would reach that round 5 minutes later. If the car had been parked in the car park at work and it'd been a sunny day, the water gets up to temp faster but the oil takes just as long. I no longer run the oil temp gauge as I upgraded to to a double DIN headunit so lost a place to mount the gauge. Given how consistent the readings were , and I don't do track days, so aren't worried about high temperatures, I don't feel the need to have it any longer. I'm quite the novice - it was quite difficult and took a long time to put it all together, but (obviously) it's not impossible.