Oil Cooler Bracket Separated

[VETE76]

just saw ths, went out to hanger and removed top cowl, mine is cracked from top to bottom. i have 98.5 hrs. callled my hanger buddy and his is cracked 3" down. he has 125 hrs. hey van fix this, to many accourances.
too cold to fly anyway. 5 degrees out. heating system on these is not good. but boy what a beautiful ride!!! you froze in my citabria too!!!

[hgerhardt]

Inspect your cooler very carefully also. My baffles cracked like that and the cooler mounting flanges cracked also, right through the center of the finned area on one side. Even though I had thru-bolted the flanges with spacers between like most people do.

[DSmith]

Has anyone talked to Van's support guys to see what he recommends. I have the same problem at 140 hours with a very smooth FADEC engine so the baffle holding the oil cooler has to be too weak. I have the tube spacers between the oil cooler flanges with the washers as recommended. It would be nice if we had and engineered fix for this instead of 1000 different trial and error shots at it.

[Ron RV8]

For whatever it's worth, here's what I did evolving from other posts on this forum. So far only 6 hours, but if this sucker cracks I'll be surprised.

Hardware store aluminum angle stiffener:



1/8 sheet to spread the load, note the aluminum angle stiffener bolts to it at the outboard end:



Additional .040 doubler:



No photo unfortunately, but oil cooler attached with 6 thru bolts with sleeves between the flanges.

[BillL]

Has anyone made the cooler mount more flexible as opposed to stiffer? That head bangs around even if the engine feel is "smooth" . An outstanding engineer at Conti once told me: "on aircraft engines we frequently make things that break MORE FLEXIBLE to avoid load transfer". Since this cooler is essentially mounted to the head, has anyone tried rubber isolation mounts?

Just thinking and asking, as I will be doing what others have successfully done with case brace, inner spacer, thicker outer flange and stiffener to the head as well. Maybe I will try Matts lower stiffener too.

For reference no installation would ever bolt to a diesel engine head. A head bolt can see 50g's. Stuff bolted to heads (without engineering, analysis and testing) almost always fails. A lesson learned repeatedly as new engineers designed new things.

[Paul K]

I too am going through this whole process, having cracked at about 80 hours from top to bottom. Doing the standard reinforceing and doubling....

If this doesn't work, going to look at some way to remote mount the oil cooler to the firewall. I know other models do it!

[Airhead]

Just completed the repair on my cracked cooler mount. Standard Van's baffle installation. I only have 57 hours, and removed cowl for general inspection. Probably wouldn't have even looked at the cooler mount except that I caught this posting last week. There were hairline cracks above and below both platenuts on outboard side. I definitely don't think it would have gone another 50 hours.

Did pretty much what others have done with a 1/8" reinf. angle, 1/8" doubler under the existing stiffner angle on top portion of cyl. 4 baffle tied into the forward baffle screw, and brace to inboard side of cooler from backside of center rocker cover screw. I now have a new attach point to lift the engine. The whole fix took about 25 hours over several days. Done with the original baffle construction could have done it in a couple of hours with scrap materials from the kit.

I won't say it because many others already have.