Turbo Cooler Radiator (8)

8 hours

The next large items I needed to find space for near the firewall was the radiator and coolant bottle for the turbo cooling system.  Sonex provides a plan for cutting out and bending a little radiator plenum, which I found to actually fit pretty much perfectly.  I made it out of a chunk of scrap sheet I had from ages ago.

Next I had to figure out where and how to mount it.  There are some pictures at the bottom of the page here that I used for reference: https://www.sonexaircraft.com/aeroveeturbo_update_020618/

I ended up for the most part copying what Sonex did.  I made a piece for each end of the radiator out of 1"x1" angle, and then some small brackets out of 2"x2" angle, cut into various shapes and sizes.  The brackets on the aft side will be riveted to the firewall, and the brackets on the forward side will be attached to the engine mount with adel clamps.  I also used another piece of 2" angle to create a mounting point for the coolant bottle.  It took quite a bit of trial and error to get the geometry of each bracket figured out, but eventually I think I came to a good solution.

I put the bottle at a slight angle to help it fit between the intake side of the turbo and the cowl.

I riveted the brackets from the inside to avoid possibly interfering with the gas tank.

The manifold pressure transducer was going to interfere with one of the coolant lines to the radiator, so I installed a 90-degree street elbow to get it out of the way.

The run from the turbo coolant outlet to the bottle inlet is really short so I had to bend the hose barb on the bottle out slightly to make it fit without kinking the hose.