erich weaver
Well Known Member
Thanks for making this a great thread Scott. THis will be helpful to a lot of folks.
Erich
Erich
Van's Air Force
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Oil cooling
- Thread starter Scott Hersha
- Start date
lostpilot28
Well Known Member
Sorry for resurrecting this thread, but I'm still trying to figure out how to lower my oil temps a little bit. With a bit of "fun" flying over the weekend, my temps were starting to creep up...and it was only 84-degrees outside! My oil temp got to 225-F before I throttled back a bit and let them cool down.
I see that the SW8406 is a great performing oil-cooler...but it's a lot of money at $615 plus shipping. Why don't more people just go with a larger Niagra brand cooler? You can get a 20006A or 20008A and save a couple hundred dollars. Any reason why no one goes this route?
Or, for that matter, why not go with the Positech 20005C and save $500? That's a lot of gas money (OK, maybe not as much as it used to be!).
I'd really like to get my oil temps to "max out" at 210 without having to pay over $600.
I see that the SW8406 is a great performing oil-cooler...but it's a lot of money at $615 plus shipping. Why don't more people just go with a larger Niagra brand cooler? You can get a 20006A or 20008A and save a couple hundred dollars. Any reason why no one goes this route?
Or, for that matter, why not go with the Positech 20005C and save $500? That's a lot of gas money (OK, maybe not as much as it used to be!).
I'd really like to get my oil temps to "max out" at 210 without having to pay over $600.
Jeff Vaughan
Well Known Member
Sonny can you give us some details on the type of engine and location of oil cooler.
Neal@F14
Well Known Member
Sonny,
We just went thru the oil cooler ordeal on a newly finished RV-8 this summer.
Started out with the Niagra 20002A supplied with the firewall forward kit for the IO-360. Mounted it on the cyl #4 rear baffle. The high compression ECI IO-360 engine simply overwhelmed this small cooler.
Next we tried the Aero Classic 20006A-equivalent 13-row cooler. Fitting it was a bit of a problem, it was just simply way too physically large and rubbed the motor mount and cowling a little bit. It also cooled way too much. Overkill.
We finally bit the expensive bullet and got the $600+ Stewart Warner 10599R cooler and the fit is perfect and the cooling capacity is perfect. Oil temps now in the 180-190 range and maybe reaches 210 in hard prolonged climbs on a 100 degree Texas summer day.
There is a less expensive option... the Niagra 20004A or Aero Classic 8000081 cooler. It's got 10 rows. Plenty of thermal cooling capacity for most IO-360 engines and it's a bit smaller (roughly same physical dimensions as the SW 10599R). Spruce sells the Aero Classic for $255.
The RV-7 looks to have a little less width than the RV-8 for mounting a cooler on the Cyl #4 rear baffle however, so you'd better measure very carefully to be sure a 9 or 10 row cooler would fit there. If the 13-row cooler hit stuff on the RV-8, there's no way it would fit on the rear baffle of an RV-7. It could fit on the baffle/inlet lower ramp up front if you don't have your air intake filter mounted there. That's where our air filter is, so we could not mount an oil cooler up front.
In retrospect, we wished we would've bought the expensive SW cooler first... it would've saved a lot of hassle and extra expense. It's a positively known-to-work well cooler. Sometimes airplane parts are just crazy expensive and you just gotta pay what they cost.
We just went thru the oil cooler ordeal on a newly finished RV-8 this summer.
Started out with the Niagra 20002A supplied with the firewall forward kit for the IO-360. Mounted it on the cyl #4 rear baffle. The high compression ECI IO-360 engine simply overwhelmed this small cooler.
Next we tried the Aero Classic 20006A-equivalent 13-row cooler. Fitting it was a bit of a problem, it was just simply way too physically large and rubbed the motor mount and cowling a little bit. It also cooled way too much. Overkill.
We finally bit the expensive bullet and got the $600+ Stewart Warner 10599R cooler and the fit is perfect and the cooling capacity is perfect. Oil temps now in the 180-190 range and maybe reaches 210 in hard prolonged climbs on a 100 degree Texas summer day.
There is a less expensive option... the Niagra 20004A or Aero Classic 8000081 cooler. It's got 10 rows. Plenty of thermal cooling capacity for most IO-360 engines and it's a bit smaller (roughly same physical dimensions as the SW 10599R). Spruce sells the Aero Classic for $255.
The RV-7 looks to have a little less width than the RV-8 for mounting a cooler on the Cyl #4 rear baffle however, so you'd better measure very carefully to be sure a 9 or 10 row cooler would fit there. If the 13-row cooler hit stuff on the RV-8, there's no way it would fit on the rear baffle of an RV-7. It could fit on the baffle/inlet lower ramp up front if you don't have your air intake filter mounted there. That's where our air filter is, so we could not mount an oil cooler up front.
In retrospect, we wished we would've bought the expensive SW cooler first... it would've saved a lot of hassle and extra expense. It's a positively known-to-work well cooler. Sometimes airplane parts are just crazy expensive and you just gotta pay what they cost.
Last edited:
lostpilot28
Well Known Member
Specs
Hi Jeff,
I'm flying a -7A with an ECI kit engine. It's an 0-360 with 8.5/1 compression ratio and it does have the piston skirt oil squirters. As an interesting side note, I was looking at my engine manual last weekend and it specifically mentions that if you have the piston squirters that you should use a larger oil cooler than the 20002A! Wish I would've caught that before.
I also have a Sam James cowl & plenum setup. The oil cooler is mounted behind the #4 cylinder on the baffle. I have maybe 1/2-inch between the oil cooler & the engine mount.
The temps aren't bad, but for a margin of safety I'd like them to be a little lower. I'd be happy with any solution which gets me 15-degrees F. But, I don't want to pay $600+ for it.
Neal, Thank you for your reply...that is very helpful information. The 10-row oil cooler you mention is a definite possibility. I don't mind paying for quality, but I would rather not over-pay for quality, either.
I wonder if there's anyone out there that had the 20002A and upgraded to the 20004A. What was the net benefit?
Hi Jeff,
I'm flying a -7A with an ECI kit engine. It's an 0-360 with 8.5/1 compression ratio and it does have the piston skirt oil squirters. As an interesting side note, I was looking at my engine manual last weekend and it specifically mentions that if you have the piston squirters that you should use a larger oil cooler than the 20002A! Wish I would've caught that before.
I also have a Sam James cowl & plenum setup. The oil cooler is mounted behind the #4 cylinder on the baffle. I have maybe 1/2-inch between the oil cooler & the engine mount.
The temps aren't bad, but for a margin of safety I'd like them to be a little lower. I'd be happy with any solution which gets me 15-degrees F. But, I don't want to pay $600+ for it.
Neal, Thank you for your reply...that is very helpful information. The 10-row oil cooler you mention is a definite possibility. I don't mind paying for quality, but I would rather not over-pay for quality, either.
I wonder if there's anyone out there that had the 20002A and upgraded to the 20004A. What was the net benefit?
Neal@F14
Well Known Member
Aero Classic also makes a 9-row cooler that's even narrower if you have a tight fit on the rear baffle mount. Either the 9 or 10 row cooler will make a sizable difference in cooling over the wimpy 7-row 20002A cooler. The 13-row Aero Classic we had, did do an excellent job of cooling. Too good in fact, we had difficulty getting up to 180 degrees with it.
