Well I finally finished up the oil cooler install for my 81 XR500R. The cooler is off a XR250. It came out really clean and neat, here are some pics. Since it's winter here I don't know how much cooler the engine runs.
Since I installed a wiseco piston kit and with the higher compression I noticed the eingine was getting really hot during the summer months when I pushed it hard. I'm sure the 105 degree heat here in the summer helps in that area too. I am hoping the oil cooler will help.

That looks really sweet. I had an 81 XR500 and when riding up steep technical stuff when it was 100, the gas would boil in the carb. It should help a lot.

Does this mod reduce the oil supply to the head any?

The FT500 guys have been doing this mod for years on their race bikes and they haven't had any problems. If anything it should cool the oil going to the head.

Can't see the pics??
Just red X's???

Corky:ride:

Sorry about pics I fixed it. Somehow the link to the pics got broke, probably me. I'm new at this.

Wow, I'd like to do this for a bunch of reasons to my 82 xl500r. Are you saying you used the pressure from the motor itself? how much oil did it ad? what kind of cooler did you use? I thought about doing something like this with an external pump.

Cooler came off an XR250R I bought off ebay for $15.00. Yes I simply tapped into the existing oil supply and re-routed it through the cooler using the existing oil pump.
Before I started it after installing the cooler I left the return line disconnected and kicked the engine through until oil came out of the hose. Then I installed the return line and kicked it through a couple more times just to be sure oil got to everything then I fired it up.
The existing oil pump will easily pump the extra oil. The cooler added about an extra 1/4 quart of oil.
I hope this will help in the summer months of riding when it gets really hot here. If not I will look for an XR400 oil cooler, it's bigger.

Baldy, this is very neat. Oil temperature is indeed a problem on the 81/82 XR500R as Cyril Neveu discovered during the 1982 Paris-Dakar race across the Sahara desert.

I was about to to something similar to what you did although I thought of having the whole of the oil flow via the cooler and the return line straight onto the camshaft, via the plastic plug (head/cover) and adding a couple of holes in the camshaft to better lubricate the journals and the cams/rockers.

What do experts think?

Fancy reposting the pics por favor?

i cant open any picture