rotarypower wrote: ↑Wed Jan 08, 2020 11:37 pm
That beehive must make a massive difference (detrimentally) to cooling.
I agree.
I put the behaviour Thomas has observed down to the beehive cooler. The coolant circuit for the beehive is as follows:
rear housing > oil cooler
oil cooler > t-piece on heater return rail
heater return rail > BOTTOM radiator hose.
In other words, coolant exiting the oil cooler and carrying any heat absorbed from the oil
never passes through the radiator - it is circulated straight back into the engine and is therefore only cooled as part of the general coolant exiting the engine once the thermostat opens. No doubt, this was designed to allow the oil to actually reach operating temperature. However, it adds an additional heat load on the coolant within the engine itself. Plus the water pump has to pull through the oil cooler itself, plus an additional head of around 2 metres of heater hose/line. There's a big path the coolant has to go down.
There will also be a local heat soak effect at the position of the cooler, plus how often do people flush this things out?
Mazda didn't waste much time getting rid of the water-oil cooler idea so we can safely assume they thought it was a failed experiment.
