The coolant pulls heat from the heads ie the roof of the combustion chamber,
the valve seats, the exhaust valve guides and ports and the outside of the
cylinder liners.

The oil cools the cam lobes, lifters and valve tips, pistons, wrist pins,
rods, rod bearings, crank, crank bearings and the cylinder walls.

So you can see that the coolant is somewhat distant from the sources of
major heat, whereas the oil is right in the thick of things.  This is why
you want an oil temperature gauge, so you can see what's going on in the
primary circuit, rather than waiting for the secondary system to let you
know.  By the time your coolant temp is making you aware that its having
trouble removing the heat from the engine, the oil temperature is through
the roof.

Now that you've got a better source of information, you'll have a better
idea of how hard that poor engine is really working.

Oil temps are okay to 212 - 220 degrees F - any much more than that would
have me taking some ameliorating action ie slowing down or pulling over,
though driving slowly cools the internals more quickly.

Does this help,  Mike?

On Tue, Jul 19, 2011 at 3:56 PM, Rocket J Squirrel <
camping.elliott@gmail.com> wrote:

> On Tue, 2011-07-19 at 13:14 -0400, Edward Maglott wrote:
>
> > I'm pretty sure the coolant flows through the heads and that is where it
> > picks up most of the engine heat.
>
>
> Oh -- okay. The only heads I've ever held were from an aircooled. They
> had no plumbing for coolant.
>
> So on the waterboxer, where is the oil picking up the extra heat that
> shows on the oil temp gauge but not the coolant gauge when the engine is
> under demand?
>
> -- RJS
>
> sent from my old aircooled heads
>

--
Jake

1984 Vanagon GL 1.9 WBX - 'The Grey Van'
1986 Westy Weekender/2.5 SOHC Subie - 'Dixie'

Crescent Beach, BC

www.thebassspa.com
www.crescentbeachguitar.com
http://subyjake.googlepages.com/mydixiedarlin%27