Random Oil Cooler Questions

I have just been reading Injected's thread and his adventures in getting his oil cooler plumbing sorted. It brings to mind a question or three that have been rattling around in my head for some years. Evidently, there is plenty of space for stuff to rattle around........

It seems to me that the hose of choice is a heavily reinforced, high pressure hose, sometimes covered in woven stainless steel. For a system that typically produces 3 - 5 psi, a hose capable of 250psi seems like a ridiculous level of overkill.

Also, my understanding is that the whole purpose of the thing is to shed heat, so heavily insulted hoses seem counter productive. 

In my addled brain, some thin metal (copper?) lines to and from the cooler with a very short flexible hose at the engine ends,  capable of handling 20 - 30 psi, would be a much more logical setup. Small tubes would be easier to rout, easier to hide, and would shed far more heat.

I get what you mean, vintage vehicles had hard lines however shaping pipe with a big enough ID to handle the flow needs a pipe bender and hard lines are susceptible to vibration induced fatigue (doesn’t mean you can’t though:()

The roller crank bikes have low oil pressure, but the plain bearing bikes are high pressure.

Even with roller bikes, the outer braided covering provides abrasion protection.

Not a fan of fully hard lined feeds, since the engine vibrates a fair bit.  The 750/4 bike oil cooler lines are a combo of hard and rubber.  I think that's ideal.  

 

The teflon  thin walled hose  covered in stainless braid  has higher volume which adds capacity and sheds heat well. 
 

TexasKZ wrote:

Also, my understanding is that the whole purpose of the thing is to shed heat, so heavily insulted hoses seem counter productive. 

The lines are just there to move the oil around; the cooling comes from the cooler itself. I think any cooling that comes from the lines would be incidental, and even if they were really well insulated it wouldn't really matter.