"Alert: Engine Oil Hot, Action Required: Idle Engine"

[Ventilator]

 

I wonder if somehow they put in 5w30 instead of 5w20. Since that 5W30 is slightly thicker...it retains more heat and then causes the message? Just spit balling...not trying to make you paranoid.

You mean 0w20?

[fondupot]

You mean 0w20?

Yea sorry.

 

 

Sent from my iPhone.

[nando87]

Has anyone else ran into this issue when towing?

[KARNUT]

Ive done a lot towing in the last 40 years, heavy stuff always over the GVW gas and diesel never saw that. My loads would be so heavy that Id never use over drive and my foot would be planted most of the time. Never overheated. I never had an oil temp gauge either. Seems to me if the water temp is ok every thing else should be fine. I would think the first part to get hot from to much heat or load would be the transmission. When it was extremely hot I would sometimes run just at the red line on water temp for hours on end as long as the water stay in the truck all was well. But like I said I never had an oil temp gauge never lost an engine, but the trans life would be about half but I expected that. O yea AC was always on unless I had to turn the heat on to top a long hill for a little extra engine cooling.

[nando87]

My water temps were never that bad, only moved a 1/4 when I got the warning about my oil temp being to hot. My tranny was reading about 245deg.

[KARNUT]

My water temps were never that bad, only moved a 1/4 when I got the warning about my oil temp being to hot. My tranny was reading about 245deg.

I never had a trans gauge either, just smell the stick, LOL, smells burnt I change it. Must have been a fluke. Of course its log on the computer, so take in and get it check, they are the experts after all. So they tell me.

[calgator73]

I thought that once you got past a certain speed the fans become kind of irrelevant because of the air being forced through the radiator at speed. How heavy is that trailer when loaded?

[Jon A]

It is true at some speed the fans are no longer increasing the airflow through the radiator. The speed at which this occurs depends upon many variables. One of the most important of these is the size of the fans. These trucks have huge, powerful fans which means they're likely going to continue helping until your speed is near triple digits. Obviously when towing you won't be going anywhere near that fast.

[calgator73]

I tried to do some digging for maximum allowable oil temperature. the c6 Corvette had a max temp of 320 degrees before it set of a warning. People in a Corvette Forum only seen that kind of temperature under prolong running in 3rd gear for the manual transmission cars. Perhaps there's nothing wrong with your oil just too much load for the given incline and axle ratio. Have you found anything out yet?

[gone_fishing]

I have my ScanGauge hooked up monitoring oil temperature. The highest I've seen so far is 230 then it came down to 220. This is while pulling my boat (maybe 2500 pounds) with A/C on, mostly flat terrain and 80 out. No load and its rarely over 208-210 which is what the engine will run at. I have noticed the higher the RPM's...the higher the oil temp. If I'm cruising in 6th and downshift into 5th, oil will go up about 10 degrees. Downshift into 4th and it goes up another 10 degrees.

[calgator73]

Looking to buy one of those... Was the oil temp available or did you have to set it up?

[redwngr]

Maybe the calibration of the oil temp switch or sender is was wrong.

[nando87]

I haven't had a chance to tow my trailer again so I haven't seen the problem come up since my last trip.

 

But I did tow my UTV this past weekend and my truck felt like It was struggling with maybe a MAX 3k behind her.

[Sooperdave]

Thanks for the info. I wouldn't be too quick to assume the fans were doing all they could for a couple reasons.

 

The biggest reason is the oil cooler on these trucks is actually an in-tank water/oil cooler in the cold side tank of the radiator. The faster those fans are blowing, the colder the water in that tank will be. The colder that water is, the better the oil cooler is going to work. If your water temp was 210 (not very likely), with your A/C off your fans are only spinning at about 10% speed--in other words, doing very little.

 

Running in those conditions at 210 is unlikely as these engines heat up fast even in much less demanding conditions--but the stock dash water temp gauge hides this fact. The Denali gauge won't move off the 210 mark until water temp exceeds 225--and it's digital so it reads exactly how GM wants it to read. I haven't tested the Chevy gauge to see exactly how it moves but they all have a "dead spot" around 210 so the chances are very high you were running at least somewhere close to 220 even if the gauge hadn't moved much. At that temp the stock programming still only has the fans running at less than 25%.

 

That matters because the water in the cold side of the radiator could be close to 200 degrees under those conditions. Even with the stock thermostat, having the fans on close to max could drop that temp by 20-30 degrees which will make it cool the oil much better. With a cooler thermostat you can have the fans come on 100% at a much lower temp. With stock programming they don't come on 100% until the engine is running 244 degrees. Also a cooler thermostat means your water and oil are cooler at the bottom of the hill before you go up giving you a larger safety buffer.

 

Anyway, that's why I think the stock performance could be improved upon significantly without spending big bucks on new parts. Of course it's possible the oil cooler just isn't good enough--I think we'll know a lot more after this summer as everybody gets a chance to tow in hot weather. Hopefully this was a one-off aberration in your case, but unless something's broken, it doens't bode well running into this issue in May.

Great information... I've always used cooler stats with tuning to insure further cooling. Never have liked how hot factory stuff runs.

[calgator73]

The NHT radiator is part # 23126402 and the standard radiator is part # 23126397. Looking at my NHT it appears that the transmission is plumbed in on one side and the oil cooler on the other. Does the base radiator have a provision for oil cooling?