Cooling the engine during the hot summer has always been a challenge and with the Turbocharger my oil ran a bit hotter than most of the ships. The factory design stacked the oil cooler on top of the radiator which never made much sense to me. Why try to cool the radiator with hot air coming from the oil cooler?

I moved my oil cooler into the tub bottom and installed an electric fan to move the air, seen in the photo. When I was flying under conditions where the oil temp began to get a bit high, I would switch on the fan and a green light near the switch would also come on to remind me to turn it off later.

You can also see the fitting that I made to hold the oil tank breather hose in the bottom of the tub. Be sure to throw out the oil tank vent cap that came with the ship and install one that vents the slippery oil mist overboard and away from your exhaust wrap and belts. Oiling your friction belts does not work in your favor. This is covered in the Hints and Tips.

The Above photo shows how the oil cooler is located in front of the rear skids with it's electric fan. The bracket in the foreground held the end of an aviation cable that ran from the landing gear bolt seen at the top of the photo and down to the landing gear shoe that the skid attaches to.

Too many of the Rotorway helicopters in our club of around 30 Rotorways had the landing gear spread out in the back By installing a crisscross of cable the gear on my Exec did not spread and was functional for as long as I had it.

In the above photo you can see the back side clutch belt that I built around 1990, the aluminum pressurized tubing that takes the turbo charged air up to the intake box on the carburetor.

You can see how the cable from the battery to the master relay is held off the frame by pieces of hose and well secured, as it is the only wire in the helicopter that does not have circuit breaker protection.

I also mounted a bracket onto the bottom of the alternator that holds three intermittent breakers to protect the alternator wires to their destinations. The one that carries the current to charge the battery runs to another intermittent breaker at the master relay bracket and then attaches to the main battery cable. By doing that the wire was protected at both ends from the alternator to the point that it reached the always hot battery cable.

The pressurized air to the carburetor cooled as it traveled through the aluminum tube and then entered the box that contains the second air filter.

In the above photo you can see both of the belt idlers, remember this was around 1990 when no one else had their ships so equipped. Sometimes good ideas catch on. These ideas worked for hundreds of hours for me and I am sure that if the ship had not been stolen they would have worked for hundreds more.

The above photo shows the air inlet for the turbo charger in the side of the tub. This was my pre-filter to catch any bugs and dust from damaging the turbo. It was easy to inspect and did a great job. The air box on the carb did a final filtering of the turbo charged air before it reached the engine.

My wife Sheila and I flew our little Rotorway Exec 152 all over Northern California. Here we are parked up on top of a knoll during the meeting of the Sierra Rotorcraft Club at Mark Kozy's home on the Swansboro airport in the Sierra Foothills. The elevation there is around 2700 feet MSL and the little Exec had no problem getting us there with our food contribution in the dog-house luggage compartment.

The old fellow thought the helicopter made a great back rest for a little siesta.

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