Was towing my 14K+ fiver through the mountains and saw oil temps near 240 degress. Is this normal? Other temps never really rose that much and no cooling fan kicked on. At what temps does the cooling fan kick on?

 

I tow with mine on a daily basis in the mountains, 20k empty gross and 30k loaded gross, and my oil temp usually runs between 200 - 220. Now I don't check it all the time but when I have that is what I've noticed.

 

What was the outside temp, was this sustained temp and was it at high continuous RPM (what truck and gear ratio do you have?)

 

x2. My oil and tranny were constantly around 200-210. Give or take my toy hauler is loaded weighing 9k, we drove through southern Arizona, mid 70's to low 80's outside temp.

 

2012 F-350 dually, temp high 70's, couple mile 3 degree grade, cooled off after topping, 5th gear 18-1900 rpm, 4th gear 2400 rpm, not ******* it.

 

I saw the exact same thing you did last year when towing on Colorado. Temps would rise on a pretty good grade but as soon as I leveled out it dropped quickly.

 

Remember that these trucks use an oil to water engine oil cooler, and therefore the truck's capability to cool the oil is dependent on the temperature of the engine coolant. The way I understand it the engine coolant temp is what determines when the fan comes on or not. 240° is a bit warm but not warm enough to cause any concerns, I got mine that hot a few times.

And secondly, remember that you're not going to hurt this engine by working it too hard. You could have had your accelerator on the floor the entire time and you would not have caused any problems, these differ from light duty applications because they are designed to run at max capacity for extended periods of time. That's why the huge radiators and cooling fan, you won't hurt it.

 

I towed my 14k fifth wheel up a grade last August and saw oil temp of 242. Truck seemed to do just fine.

 

These engines squirt oil into the skirt of the piston to cool the piston. So when you are under a hard load. Lots of turbo boost. The oil temp will climb pretty fast. I've also seen temps around 242° when pulling trailers up steep grades.

Last summer we asked about this and the response from the Ford Engineers was that 242 was still with in the design specs for this engine/oil. So unless you see something higher than that, You are fine.