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I've been thinking about this a lot recently and will probably try something after my next track event. I think that the cooling/heating situation of the DCT thermostat has three stages:
1) Heating oil with coolant
2) Cooling oil with air
3) Cooling oil with air and coolant
The third point is the key.
I also am looking for ways to just get more heat out of the whole system, oil, coolant, trans. It seems like the coolant loop is a good opportunity for improvement as stock it goes:
Heads > DCT > Pump > Heater Core > Return
It never once goes through a cooler of any sort, unless you're blasting the heat (which I've found does help things.)
My idea involves using the PPK2 water radiator from a 1M and changing the routing of this fluid to be:
Heads > Heater Core > Pump > Cooler > DCT > Return
Most of this can be achieved with off the shelf OEM parts, including the additional rad and ducting. My car is a 1 series but the 1M and M3 are the same between the bumper and wheel wells so the rad and duct should fit an M3. The bottom snorkle of the intake will need to be removed so it pulls air from behind the bumper cover, but that's how my car has always been.
My theory here is that my heat will still work the same as a manual car, the cooler will remove heat from the coolant when the DCT is in mode 2 above so the return coolant temp will be lower and help in overall engine cooling, and in the infrequent times the DCT needs to step up to mode 3, the coolant will be much cooler and able to recover the DCT temps faster. The only sacrifice is DCT warm up time, but that's not a big deal on a track car.
I have a track event in two weeks I'm going to get data on temps, warm up, cool downs, etc. Then plan to make that modification and head back to the track to compare data.
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