how hot should oil get?

my vdo guage (could well be wrong) tells me my oil temp is getting towards 130 degrees whilst sat in traffic. it seems to be hovering between 100 and 120 once warmed, to a certain point evey drive home when the traffic kicks in, bearing in mind i have been driving for about 20-30 mins before hand.
is this a bit warm? what should it be at?

tom.

its should be sat between 90-110/120, i've never been able to get mine up that high though?! lol but hots good (as long as its not in the red)  :wink:

a few checks though; are you running the standard air cooled oil cooler?

is the cooler a bit on the dirty side?

when your sat in traffic there's no air passin through to cool the oil, if its dirty then its not allowing it to dissipate the heat efficiently

if thats not helping it may well be worth a service so running some engine gunk through the system for a few days (read the label!! there's the engine bay degreaser and the actual internal stuff) then giving it an oil change/filter etc will help a great deal

I've had my oil a tad hotter than that before, but it doesn't sound too bad. Mine got that hot when I hadn't changed oil/filter for a while so may be worth doing a change?

on the numbers - no problems