Not General Motors but aftermarket delivers first oil to air engine oil cooler for Corvette C7 Z06, not exactly a doozy but still...

As this blog pointed out on many occasions in the past, the overheating problems plaguing the +General Motors flagship, Corvette C7 Z06 are related directly to the most likely the most idiotic and incompetent powertrain design marketed as TRACK CAPABLE ever: from the choice of induction, through the undersized compressor, on to the truly shitty air circulation through obstructed radiator and non existent under hood heat extraction to the true pièce de résistance:  oil to coolant (or coolant to oil when oil is cold) heat exchanger (not to be mistaken with a COOLER).

With the third year of the +General Motors truly spectacular failure of the alleged CERTIFIED SUPERCAR and after a variety of truly clueless and idiotic solutions to the problem nobody in the aftermarket and within GM itself can apparently comprehend (except for the Nurburgring conqueror, +Tadge Juechter who flat out refuses to even register any heat related issues, blaming any issues on the  owners, choice of transmissions, driving styles and other just as credible bullshit), there is a new contestant: a place called D3 Performance, offering nothing less than an actual oil to air front mounted engine oil cooler.

Unlike the geniuses who just a while ago decided to hack out a couple of holes in the bumper in the areas where the air flow happened to be least effective (no, they did not figure out an actual oil cooler was needed), this place decided to recycle the existing front air intake on the newest flagship and route the air flow to the oil cooler through one of the existing front brake cooling duct intakes.

Of course, there are problems with this proposal: the OEM front air intake opening on the flagship, courtesy of the same as base front bumper is inadequate for even normally aspirated base Corvette C7 Stingray, between the air needed for brake cooling, engine air intake and front mounted radiator, condenser and intercooler, the engine oil cooler's cut is not even close to being adequate.  To make the matters even worse, this design forces hot air ran through the cooler to be dumped on the front brakes which is not exactly how brake cooling was intended to work.  

A better design would employ a separate air route for the oil cooler (hello fender louvers perhaps?) but obviously, this is still more promising than the current aftermarket idiocy.

Of course, there may also be a slight problem with driveability on the street due to the considerably longer oil warm up time (emissions, longevity and pressure, for starters?), even assuming the necessary bypass and thermostat perform satisfactorily but in the end, this is a minor inconvenience considering the benefits an actual air cooler can offer .

With this long overdue sign of semi intelligent Corvette life, this blog continues to wait for someone who finally figures out the redesign of the front bumper (hard to believe this has not happened yet) and engine compartment heat extraction system (one that actually works, not the bullshit look alike Juechter's team came up with...)