[WhatsADSM]

Thought I would update this thread since I now have returned from my first track event with this car. Its a 2011 N55 DCT car, with the CSF water cooler and CSF oil cooler. It also has basic "FBO" mods (filter, IC, downpipe, tune), coilovers and M3 arms, RSFB, brake upgrades, coded out nannies, R-Comps, being driven pretty aggressively at an advanced level.

The first session I took it a little easy as I was still getting used to the car. For that session at roughly 80*F it managed to keep the oil temps at about 270-280*F and there was no discernable drop in power. The second session I started to take things a bit faster and I *thought* I felt a drop in power as I glanced at the gauge which appeared to be just past 280 or so. It was near the end of the session so I told myself I would keep and eye on it.

By the last sessions of the first day I was getting much faster and more aggressive with the car and was able to pretty easily hit a power reduction with the oil temps creeping to somewhere near 300*F. Most of the day was right around 80*F ambient .

The second day it was slightly cooler with temps in the mid 70s. However I was also now a slightly more seasoned driver and starting to really put the car through its paces. At this point it was pretty obvious I could get the car into oil temperature based limp after about 5-6 hard laps (with laps between about 1:43 and high 1:50s depending on traffic). One time I tried for a fast lap with the temp high and it went beyond a simple power reduction and pretty much shut me down... Like to the point where I actually thought I blew off a charge pipe or something, but I glanced at the gauge and found it well over 300*... maybe 310*F?! So i quickly just went into a cooldown lap. With about a lap of cooldown the car would get to ~260 or so and I could get another 2-3 laps out of it before it would get to hot again.

Based on the this data my conclusions are:

1) The N55 driven in anger (at least with a DCT) can not sustain oil temps to the point where power will not fold back after about 10 minutes or so.
2) The CSF radiator does well, keeping coolant temps in check. The CSF oil cooler is garbage, probably does little to nothing better than stock. I am going to email them and see what they have to say. Before I purchased it I asked if they had any real-world results and their response was a generic "it works well we stand by our products".