The following has come from Jerry Herbert, and concerns the Laminova oil/water heat exchanging oil cooler, as found fitted to Rover 25 and Rover 45 L-series diesel engines. It has been suggested that these units (that can be purchased from a scrap yard for as little as £45) can be used on the MGF and Lotus Elise to control oil temperatures (as Simon Scuffham, and many others, have done using the aftermarket, off the shelf Laminova - as shown opposite, right) - but the question arises - how do you fit the Rover "Laminova" to a K-series engine?

Here's what Jerry wrote:

Thermostat is fed from two sources.

1. a central tube leading to spring loaded disc with 4 holes and a one-way valve to bypass the main thermostat (shown in pic)
2. a larger annular water passage between the first plastic pipe and the aluminium heat exchanger ending in the 82*C thermostat.

There will be a long silence whilst I get my head around the workings of this. There is another remote thermostat on the diesel, but I think this could be adapted to work OK.

If the central bleed carries hot water into the waxstat on warm up, the main thermostat valve will open and pass larger quantities of water to the radiator in the usual way?

I'm not convinced this will work, so I need to write down on paper and try out options.
Let me know what you think,

Cheers,

Jerry

So the question is, what function is the built in thermostat performing, and how does one plumb this into the K-series cooling system? For the Elise, Carlo's website provides some clues: http://web.tiscali.it/elise_s1/fitting2.htm

More information to come!

Many thanks to Carlo - the bottom right image shows how the oil cooler ought to be installed:

• blue arrow is from rad
• red arrow is from engine (T junction needed)
• pink arrows are to pump

The assumption is that the in-built thermostat is a 'remote' thermostat for the main engine cooling circuit.