Hot and cold

- Now when the Finnish nature shows its best and there is plenty of snow even in the south most parts of Finland, it’s a bit hard to recall all last summer's overheating issues. But that's the way it was only three months ago.
- I was leafing my old notes from previous driving seasons and to my surprise there was one or two bullets about high engine temperatures already in 2007 and 2008. Back then the only instrument to monitor coolant temp was the car's original temp gauge. Most of time needle stands straight up and too high temp can be observed as a slight tilt towards northeast.
- As I found myself spending more and more time on track I thought it would be a good idea to install a set of real instruments on top of dash. So I went to get two A'PEXi EL-series gauges: water temp and oil pressure.
- I can confirm that NA's (at least in my car) original water temp gauge is there just for show. Original's "normal temperature" = needle straight up means anything from 60-110 deg C. Well, actually that is just fine, but the scale is too rough for my purposes. On the other hand the oil pressure gauge in my 1991 MX-5 is decent. The only problem is that it hides behind the steering wheel, because mine is a bit smaller than the original.
- Now I know that on track, if the day is warm – say +20-25 deg C, coolant temp rises to 100-110 deg C after five to eight hard laps. Even on very cool autumn afternoon, outside air temp showing little less than +10 deg C, the engine heats immediately to 95 deg C. And that's not all, oil temp rose to 110 deg C plus plus. How much above 110? I can't tell any better because the scale ended there.