REFLECTOR: Oil Cooler Lines

Ronnie Brown romott at adelphia.net
Wed Sep 8 11:23:44 CDT 2004


MessageKevin,

I ran mine down separate ducts.  The hot line goes up the right side and the big wires went in that side.  The return line goes down the left side with the throttle and mixture control cables and the smaller, instrument wires. 

My engine (IO360 C1C) runs nice and cool.  

Several things I tried to pay attention to while getting a cool installation (my IA says to get rid of the high oil temp problems, make sure the heads are running cool!!!):

1. Stock NACA ducts on top (no VG's needed).

2. Stock plenum is molded to engine at the join lines (duct taped the engine and laid up 2 bid to get a better seal between plenum and engine block).

3. Don't forget to close up the big opening at number 2 Cylinder (right front).

4. Fabricate and Install lower cylinder wraps.  They should come to within 1.5" of each other.  Don't forget the baffle that goes between and on the bottom of the cylinders.

5. Separated the oil cooler lines.  Did not use full length shrink wrap (too much insulating).  Rather I shaped the lines so that they had the same contour as the bottom of the fuselage. Then used short pieces of plastic water pipe which was about 1/8" thick to support the aluminum tubing away from the fuselage.  I used heat shrink to hold these in place.  These are spaced out every 6-8" along the length of the cooling lines. I used heat shrink on the throttle/mixture control cables to keep them from rubbing the oil cooler line.

7. The oil cooler was taped and 2 layers of bid were used to get a nice tight seal on the oil cooler inlet and outlet.  I then used RTV to close up any remaining gaps around the edges of the oil cooler, front and back.

8. The oil cooler outlet protrudes away from the fuselage - probably sticks down 1.5" - 2" to create a suction on the air leaving the cooler.  

9. The back of my cowl is within 1" of the prop leading edge.  I notched the top and bottom of the cowl to aid in removing the cowls just enough to clear the prop (I use a rag to keep from scratching the prop).  This improves (per Alan Shaw) the suction from the prop to help pull hot air out of the Cowl.  By the way, the exit air from my cowl is under 160 degrees F.  Hot climb will cause this to go to 200 deg F.

My engine runs cool on the ground (<300 CHT except on the hottest of days).  During a cruise climb to 5000' at 100 kts, my  heads will get up to about 360 during warm weather (90 degrees).  If they get hotter, I just lower the nose and increase the cruise climb speed to 110kts.  Cruise at 2600 rpm (fixed pitch Catto) is about 330-350 degrees depending on how lean I am running it. I have never seen 400 degrees CHT - my GRT EIS alarms at 400 - never seen an alarm.  I didn't have to do any flow balancing.  When climbing the rear cylinders run about 10-20 deg warmer than the fronts, then at cruise the rear cylinders run about 10 degrees cooler than the front).  Side to side is generally within 10 degrees. 


Ronnie Brown
173 Elite RG - 150 hours
http://home.sprintmail.com/~romott/page10.html 
  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Velocity_AZ 
  To: reflector at tvbf.org 
  Sent: Wednesday, September 08, 2004 10:53 AM
  Subject: REFLECTOR: Oil Cooler Lines


  I am wondering if anyone out there who had both oil cooler lines running down the same wire duct separated them (one down one wire duct and the other down the keel or opposite wire duct) AND saw a lower oil temperature (if so, how much)?

  Thanks,

  Kevin Steiner



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