{"id":4604,"date":"2017-12-31T16:21:12","date_gmt":"2017-12-31T16:21:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stjohn.openbar.com\/airplane\/?p=4604"},"modified":"2017-12-31T16:25:46","modified_gmt":"2017-12-31T16:25:46","slug":"oil-cooler-day-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stjohn.openbar.com\/airplane\/?p=4604","title":{"rendered":"Oil Cooler, Day 3."},"content":{"rendered":"

I thought this was going to be a fairly easy exercise.\u00a0 After all, what’s the big deal, right?\u00a0 Attach a flange to the baffle, mount the cooler, fab up some fiberglass ducting, slap on a length of SCEET, and presto, done.<\/p>\n

Nah.\u00a0 Slow your roll, dude.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

First thing that needed to happen was removing the old cooler mounting flange.\u00a0 \u00a0Rather than take the baffles apart, which may have been a poor decision, I figured I’d just unzip all the rivets along the top and left of frame so the baffle can open up, swinging open from the bend right about where the spark plug wires go in.\u00a0 That hypothesis was borne out.\u00a0 After some less-than-stellar de-riveting, I have the baffle exposed, but even opening up, it was difficult to get any kind of squeezer or rivet set into the area by the engine mount tubes.\u00a0 Before anyone freaks out, yes I did clean up the mangled rivet holes, and a couple of them went away entirely when I cut out some excess for the 4″ flange opening, seen in the next shot.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

So now there’s a big plate of aluminum doubling up the baffle, to which is attached a beefy 4″ aluminum duct flange from an industrial dust collection system.\u00a0 Fun fact about that:\u00a0 Originally, this duct was two pieces, which included a sliding gate to control the amount of air going through the duct.\u00a0 Cool setup, but it was not to be.\u00a0 I either had edge-distance issues or conflicts with other parts of the structure, and it didn’t look like I would be able to set up the control cable and mount it.\u00a0 Bummer, but that’s the way it goes.\u00a0 \u00a0I want to return to flight ASAP, I don’t want to be back to project status for any longer than necessary to make this a safe, effective modification.<\/p>\n

The final configuration looks a little different from the above.\u00a0 The flange is flipped over to provide material to rivet along the top where the baffle parts connect, and I cut one of the tabs off to allow for clearance of something else.\u00a0 \u00a0But it looks like I have enough room for a 90 bend of SCEET (or one of those boy-racer intercooler inlet elbows) and a diffuser.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

This is where I plan to put the oil cooler.\u00a0 I’ve checked for clearance to mount tubes, wires, and my fuel line (important, that), and it also clears the lower cowl.\u00a0 I think I can connect to the engine mount with Adel clamps in at least 4 places, both from above and below.\u00a0 It also looks like there are no immediate obstacles to exit air, but I’m not sure how airflow will be affected by the proximity of the engine mount tubes, but there is nothing directly up against the fins on the bottom.<\/p>\n

So I guess my New Year’s resolution for 2018 is to solve all my cooling issues.\u00a0 Among the things that keep me awake at night is the possibility that the 4″ duct will now steal too much cooling air from the cylinder heads.\u00a0 Also on the list is to rework the baffle seals to be fewer, more continuous pieces, made of silicone instead of the black rubber baffle material.<\/p>\n

Today is New Year’s Eve.\u00a0 It’s unlikely I’ll be making more headway on this until after I go back to work, but if I keep it chill on tonight’s festivities, I might be able to put in some work tomorrow.<\/p>\n

Happy New Year, everyone!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I thought this was going to be a fairly easy exercise.\u00a0 After all, what’s the big deal, right?\u00a0 Attach a flange to the baffle, mount the cooler, fab up some fiberglass ducting, slap on a length of SCEET, and presto, done. Nah.\u00a0 Slow your roll, dude. First thing that needed to happen was removing the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[21,61],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stjohn.openbar.com\/airplane\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4604"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stjohn.openbar.com\/airplane\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stjohn.openbar.com\/airplane\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stjohn.openbar.com\/airplane\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stjohn.openbar.com\/airplane\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4604"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/stjohn.openbar.com\/airplane\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4604\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4607,"href":"https:\/\/stjohn.openbar.com\/airplane\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4604\/revisions\/4607"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stjohn.openbar.com\/airplane\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4604"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stjohn.openbar.com\/airplane\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4604"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stjohn.openbar.com\/airplane\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4604"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}