New Caprice - Discussion forums

Synthetic oil is not the issue here... when the oil temps climb, the viscosity rating the oil was certified at goes out the window. When oil viscosities are developed, the formulation is done at a standard operating temperature. When you exceed those parameters, you have serious issues. We just spent nearly $25K installing a dry-sump oiling system in a Nissan GTR to more than double its oil capacity over stock but also to help keep the oil within its designed operating parameters.

The Tahoe has the same oil to radiator system but the benefit of a much larger cooling capacity, more airflows around the engine due to the landscape of a greater space under the hood than the Caprice has. So in just air-space... the Tahoe can deal a lot better.

The real issue for these departments is that many of them were sold these cars and lied to that the Synthetic oil is not a requirement so these departments are running a Fleet Oil which was supplied by the LOWEST BIDDER. Top that with an officer sitting on the side of a hot highway, typically in the grass or shade where there is little to no breeze. This adds to the issue where the Caprice has little to no heat dissipation outside of airflow escaping under the car... and then said officer sees a speeder and floors it! All that hotness turns to a hot mess!

Just for reference here, below is a picture of the oil cooler adapter on a 2010 Tahoe PPV. This is from our Tahoe, and a picture showing what I guess is the bypass plug that we had to replace the o-ring on shortly after getting the truck. That's held fine ever since. But the adapter takes up much less space under there, and could provide a source of a nice block-hugging adapter for an oil cooler:



The oil filter is to the lower left corner of the picture, the front of the engine is to the upper left corner, and the transmission is to the lower right corner. Sorry, under the truck, on my back with a cell phone.

For what it's worth in the Central Texas area here where it gets pretty hot we have had zero issues with vehicles running hot even after Idling all day in the hot sun. All of the caprices are V8 equipped I think many times people in the industry forget the pains of changing with the times and all too often I see the wrong viscosity oil or inferior quality oil run in government Fleets. Many fleet managers hold onto 30-year-old knowledge and refuse to accept that the times have changed faster than they

these cars call for dexos which is a synthetic blend Even though our department runs improper oil we have been fortunate so far to not have any failures but I remind everyone that in the case of engine failure and most modern vehicles oil should be the first thing that is looked at and like I said many of these cars in fleet service do not run the correct oil.

Updated info in the original post in this thread.

Bumping this, I recently deleted my oil cooler but when I had my car apart I noticed the trans cooler seems to have a thermostat bypass on it. I was almost thinking maybe either adding another one hooked up to the oil cooler (with Tahoe lines) or getting a larger trans cooler and reusing the stock one for oil. Any thoughts?

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