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Re: Making my series 5 into my dream plane
Hey guys, after speaking with John from kitfox it was pretty clear that I needed to not just get more air to the cooler but I would need a larger one, since I had the smaller cooler for the 80hp engine. So I decided to try to avoid cutting into my cowl if I didn't have to and go with a larger oil cooler in a location that would get more air.
The new oil cooler is about 3 inches longer than my old one, which still wasn't very large so I decided to try running dual oil coolers. A friend of mine who is a welder came and helped me build a bracket to hold the new cooler above the gearbox. It took about an hour or so but fits nice and snug in there.
I went ahead and did a test flight (it was about 90 degrees out at the time) and found that I couldn't get my oil temps above 150, so I dropped 100 degrees by adding the additional cooler. A definite improvement but this was obviously too much so I went ahead and got rid of my original cooler, and went with only the larger one. I did another test flight and my temps jumped back up to about 180-190, still a little low but I think I would rather be too cool than too hot, now I can just work on blocking off sections of the new cooler until I get in the correct range. I was worried that I might end up blocking too much air coming into the cowl by mounting it above the gearbox like that and would see a rise in my CHTs but that wasn't the case, they held steady at 200.
So for now I am going to run it with the larger cooler mounted above the gearbox and see how it does. I am considering moving the larger one back below the gearbox and trying to make room for it but I am not sure if there is any real need to. Does anyone know if there is any reason not to run the cooler where I have it? (see photos below)
This is with both coolers, a little overkill
Here is where the new cooler is mounted, if I decide to leave it there I will get the brackets powder coated black to match the old ones. Is there any reason to avoid running it above the gearbox like this?
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