High oil temp questions
 

Im hoping someone can help to answer a couple questions on my high oil temp.

Has anyone ever had a Vernatherm go bad or stick?

What size cooler are you using for a 200HP IO-360 and what size inlet/scat tube size feeding it?

Where and how are the coolers mounted?

I have a 13 row Positeck being fed from a 4" scat coming off the rear baffle behind #3 and am having 220-225 most of the time and it's just now starting to warm up weather wise.

What temps are most of you seeing with a similar cooler set up?

Any ideas???

You'll find...
 

...a lot of info by searching "oil coolers" dating back to 2006. I too have that issue every summer and am always on the verge of adding another, smaller cooler. However I have found that the throttle (always wondered if that lever had any use besides making me poorer) and pitch attitude have a big influence on you temps.
As an aside I have the biggest SW cooler for my IO-390 and I works great here in Florida from Oct to May.
Don

similar set up but much cooler oil temp...
 

I have a similar setup, 4" sceet feeding a firewall mounted plenum (standard RV-10 part using the standard RV-10 oil cooler) in my RV-7 with a 390... unrestricted climbs with cruise temps around 190 on the very hottest of days.

A 13-row cooler fed by 4" SCAT ought to be sufficient for an angle-vale, and overkill for a parallel valve IO-360, but you might want to try swapping out a 13-row Aero Classics for the Positech. The Positech coolers don't seem to be as efficient at shedding heat as well as the Aero Classics or the SW coolers (breathtakingly expensive but the best there is).

See http://www.oilcoolers.com/notlinked/...nce_curve1.htm for some data on cooler efficiency comparisons between a 10 row Positech getting beat by a 7-row Aero Classics and a 7 row NDM cooler. Data on the 13-row Aero Classic is seen here: http://www.oilcoolers.com/notlinked/...3rowcurves.htm

You might also want to check to see if the air exit area for the hot air leaving the cooler and escaping out of the lower cowl is sufficient enough or if any high pressure air is bleeding from the upper cowl area to the lower cowl area and pressurizing the lower cowl area (and thus reducing the pressure differential across the cooler.

My friend's RV-8 with the heat monster ECI IO-360 engine has a rear-baffle-mounted SW10599R cooler (9 or 10 rows, depending on how you count them) and if part of the rubber baffle seal near the front of the upper cowl doesn't get placed right when the top cowl is installed, it'll leak into the lower cowl area and wreck the oil temps quickly due to the reduced pressure differential. We're also contemplating cutting open the exhaust area of the lower cowl a little bit more since it's got the 4-pipe exhaust system and that fills up the exit area quite a bit and may be restricting the hot air from leaving from the lower cowl.

Thanks for the info guys.

I swapped out the Vernatherm today, removed, flushed, cleaned the core and resealed the cooler today, of course there was no change.

For those of you running a 4 pipe exhaust, where are your pipes sitting in the tunnel? Mine are tucked up tight and perhaps restricting the air exiting the cowl? Maybe I should lower them down closer to the cowling???

fyi
 

This setup should be standard on every RV. It just works....

I ordered a RV-10 firewall plenum yesterday and will give it a shot before I bite the bullet and buy a new cooler.

the Positech P20006 will work with the RV-10 mount but the moutning holes are slightly off.

Verrrrrrry interesting on that incorrect filter adapter gasket issue. That's something that should definitely be checked out.