Water or Oil temp before pushing it?

[KevinH1990]

I recently installed a 996 cluster which includes an oil pressure gauge. The oil pressure at idle on start up is about 5 bar reflecting the greater resistance to flow of cold oil. The oil pressure at idle when the car is fully warmed up is about 1.5 bar which I interpret to mean that the fully warmed oil is flowing most freely.

When the water temperature first reaches 180 degrees, the oil pressure at idle is still pretty high - about 3.5 bar. This tells me that the oil still needs to warm up a bit more to reach its peak flow.

I've been waiting a little longer than in the past to really thrash the car.

[MBDiagMan]

If you're wanting to really wind it out, I would not do it oil temp below 200, I would FOR SURE not do it below 180.

It might be that with lighter oils than we used in our dirt track cars you could get bywith it, but.... I've seen several high dollar circle track engines destroyed after a long caution allowing the ol temp to fall to 180 and then on the restart, of they're in the running they have no choice except to give it all it has. The oil is cool and stiff and won't flow well.

All that said, I'm sure that you aren't using the heavy oils that we used, so you might get by with 180 oil temp. Personally I would do some experimenting to learn what the oil temp will come to after an extended warm up period. It's not as if you're driving a car with a cheap throw away engine.