The oil cooler scoop is bitchin! If this doesn't cool the best then nothing will! The yellow foam is perfect for the job. Easy to sand without the brittle nature of the green foam. The scoop will house the 2" CAT ducting that will arrive on wednesday. I shaped the scoop to allow a nice radiused leading edge around the opening and just below the boundry layer that has been said to be as much as 1/4" thick that far back on our birds. The overall shape is at a safe minimum to allow the CAT to fit nicely inside without being too large and tapers back to the aft of the cowl in a low drag airfoiled shape. Actually, the boat tail cowling has shown to be very efficient and this scoop allows a little of that to take place making me think this scoop will actually send less turbulant air into the prop. I highly doubt the drag penalty of the scoop will be very noticeable, but a very important addition to a much needed solution. Construction began with a sinlge layer of BID tape at the foam/cowl intersection, then 3 layers of Carbon BID. This should help stiffen things up a bit. One thing to note, I chose to run the scoop forward of the original NACA inlet because there is a REAL possiblity that this scoop will also serve as an alternate air source for the engine in the event that the top mounted intake gets clogged up. It would only take a small bird to do it. And if this inlet works Better than expected I may even convert my Engine intake to feed off of this location. I've got plenty of room in front of the oil sump to locate a large filter and take advantage of the ram air that has given James Redmon, what he says to be, the BEST performance mod of the entire airplane. She will cure now until I can start working on the internals of the scoop. Exciting!
