Cheers lads :D

You want to maintain the oil temp at 90-95 deg constantly.

You use an oil cooler to drop the temp down if it's going too high, or too low.

You can have oil/air coolers (look like a min radiator) or oil/water coolers. then usually have a thick sandwich plate off the oil filter and the engines coolant (usually maintained and a useful 90deg) keep the oil up to temp.

for a road car a water/oil is a good choice, as it aids rapid oil heating, so reduces wear, but as the tempterature differential is much smaller (even though water has a better latent heat co-eff) it can not cool the oil too brilliantly if you were out on the Ring for a few laps.

On a track car, you'll want an oil/air set up. Termostat set up are ok, but really you just have some cardboard to block off part of the cooler if the oils running cold. As cold oil is just as bad as too hot oil.

oil is taken from the engine (normally from a sandwhich plate between the oil filter and the block) and sent along some pipes to a little thing which acts like a radiator, then it goes back through the other pipe, into the sandwich plate, and through the oil filter, then back through the engine as normal.

you need a thermostat on them, to control the flow, making sure it only flows when the oil is hot, otherwise you never get warm oil, which is bad.

Ok, maybe a bit daft of me saying "basic".

Il try again by saying - an explanation please (how it works etc)

basically to cool your oil

Dont really know what exactly the purpose of these is so would like to know :)

Can anyone give a basic explanation ?