Oil Cooler !

I have been struggling for a long time with what to do about the oil cooler.  For the IO-375 you need a bigger cooler than what Vans provides, but how big and how to mount it?  Vans offers a 7 tube cooler, Aerosport says you can go as large as a 13 tube cooler for this engine..  But there is no way that big a cooler can fit where I need it to.   So in the end I went with a 9 tube cooler mounted per the plans on the firewall.  It’s bigger than the 7 but still small enough to mount per plans.  Others have gotten pretty creative about mounting bigger coolers in the engine mount, or along the firewall, but in my case I wanted to go with the simple baffles installation.  Simple.. Even though, it took all weekend to complete.  :-)

 

Since a 9 tube is larger than plans, there will be more oil weight in the cooler so vibration is a greater concern as it will be mounted out near the cylinder head.   I reinforced the mount pretty significantly as you can see so am not worried about baffles cracking etc.  I am not worried about adding extra weight with the reinforcement since I saved so much weight by going with the composite prop.  I still plan to mount an angle across the front of the cooler for extra torsional strength, but for the most part, this will be my final install of the cooler.   Rather than saying how I did it I will just post tons of photos.  Looks good and I am glad it is done !