RV-10 oil cooler on baffles?

Yesterday I performed a pre-buy inspection on an RV10 that had the oil cooler attached to the rear of cylinder 6. I've never seen an RV10 with the cooler installed in that location--- the plans call for it to be installed on the firewall. The current owner originally had a sam james cowl and lots of heating problems, so he replaced the cowl and the plenum, and redid the baffles. He claimed the new set of baffles for the RV10 came with the oil cooler already cut out of the rear baffle.

Given some of the problems we have seen with smaller coolers on the 4-cylinder engines with baffle mounting, I was very surprised, and skeptical, especially since it was only mounted with 4 bolts through the flanges of the cooler. The oil cooler for the 10 is much larger and it seems to me it is a lot more mass to be placing on that rear cylinder.

My advice was that even if it is a new design, we certainly don't have much fleet experience with it and should inspect it regularly. I will be placing a call to van's on Monday, but thought I would ask here in case someone else has seen it. Perhaps someone with a recent baffle kit?

Thanks.

Vic

Doesn't sound right. My baffle kit is less than 2 years old and has the 4 inch round hole.

Just what we thought...

The prospective buyer asked the owner to show him the baffle plans/kit when they got back home. It was clearly labeled RV7/RV9!

Vic

Rockets typically mount the cooler to the baffles. Mine certainly does.

The oil cooler on the rear baffle was a design from Sam James. His early plenum and cowl set up had cylinder and oil cooling problems. He included plans for the baffles so they would fit his plenum. I was an early adopter of Sam's plenum and cowl and worked with him on the cooling problems. I never liked the idea of the oil cooler on the baffle, so I installed it as per Van's plans. After trial and error, We figured out we needed larger inlets (5.5") and larger exit air area.
I can keep CHT's under 400' in a climb, and 380' to 390' at cruise; oil temps are 210'-190' on hot days.
I think the owner may have been talking about the cutout in the new baffle kit for the hose that goes to the oil cooler on the firewall

Wrong kit

No, it was the wrong baffle kit. It had the square hole.

Thanks.

Vic

Vic

The Piper Saratoga has both the oil coolers installed installed on each oil cooler. The Saratoga has usually 1 cooler but ours was used for skydiving and there standard is to install a second cooler due to the hard climbs they do every flight.

The rear baffling is make out of .040 to take the weight. other then that no issues and it can be toff to get the oil warm in the winter months.

And the Saratoge has a io540 angle valve motor 300 HP ported, flow matched cylinders so we are producing apporx 325 - 330 HP.

So if the rear baffle is thick and strong enough to support the weight I see no issue.

And also the coolers are mounted with -3 bolts thru the flanges 2 each per flange. Just make sure there is spacers between the flanges on each bolt.

Just my 2 cents worth.

james cowl setup

When I picked up my James plenum Sam told me to fab my own baffles according to his plans and mount the oil cooler on the baffles. He said the lower cylinder baffle exits were not sized properly on Van's baffle for his plenum setup.
Interestingly he showed me a plane with his plenum installed with baffles to his plans and the oil cooler was on the firewall, not on the baffles.

I didn't listen to him mostly because his plans were just scribbled on a piece of paper, were barely visible and hard to follow

I do have the enlarged inlets and my temps are fine.

I haven't seen this mentioned here before but i believe there are two versions of James cowls for the RV-10. One has a lower bottom to accommodate cold air sumps and a larger exit for the bigger Forsling exhaust.
I have the standard one with a standard engine.

Wrong kit

I mentioned this a few posts up---the builder actually used the RV7/RV9 baffle kit on the 10 and claimed it was the new style RV10 baffle kit. . It is not designed for that.

Yes, many certified planes have the cooler mounted near or to the baffles, some in the front like Bonanza's, and some in the rear, like the Saratoga mentioned above. But they are engineered to be installed in those positions, and have the proper supports.

This one did not.

Thanks.

Vic

vic syracuse said:

-the builder actually used the RV7/RV9 baffle kit on the 10 and claimed it was the new style RV10 baffle kit. . It is not designed for that.

Click to expand...

I guess you also found a couple big holes in the baffle sides at cyl 3 & 4 (since the 7/9 baffle kit is only for the front and aft cyl's)?

vic syracuse said:

I mentioned this a few posts up---the builder actually used the RV7/RV9 baffle kit on the 10 and claimed it was the new style RV10 baffle kit. . It is not designed for that.

Yes, many certified planes have the cooler mounted near or to the baffles, some in the front like Bonanza's, and some in the rear, like the Saratoga mentioned above. But they are engineered to be installed in those positions, and have the proper supports.

This one did not.

Thanks.

Vic

Click to expand...

Vic, My 7 baffle kit (IO360) did not have a cut out for the cooler, just a mention to cut a hole, but not specifically where. I am a bit surprised it fit a 540? There had to be some modifications to extend it forward.

I braced my cooler three directions, like other successful installation.

From the horses mouth

I replaced my baffles when I pulled the Sam James cowl. The only part in the 10 baffle kit that was different was the #6 cylinder aft baffle. It did not have the round hole, kit did not come with the scat ring, and it included a doubler. All else was 10 specific. Questioning this I even re-ordered just that one baffle. Same thing was received. In the documentation provided by vans was the 7/9 page, which I shold to the prospective buyer without him asking so he saw what i did. Since things do change over time in the plans, I made a thicker doubler than vans provided and opened up the square inlet to match the size of the bigger -10 cooler and just figured I have seen this design on other certified aircraft and other 10s I went with it.

My oil cooler has been on my baffles from day 1. After 220 hours no cracks. Even did dye pentetrant on the old baffles when I replaced them. They came through clean. Oshkosh 09 I believe it was I saw a few (probably 3) -10s with a fiberglass wedge on the baffles holding the oil cooler. I am not the first to go down this road. Who knows what happens in 100 hours. I went against the grain with that Sam James cowl, not trying to buck the norm here but if it comes down to it I'll be the first to, at least openly, say my cooler is on the baffles, track it, and report data.

Eric