Oil Cooler: cleaning the oil cooler

The above photos are of the 'doghouse' type 1 oil cooler from the engine.

After unbolting it, I noticed that it has bits of rust inside it. Whenever I shook it, particles of rust kept falling out of the holes like pepper.

I repeatedly tried to shake out all the dust but that prooved futile so i poured vegetable oil (didnt have any motor oil) and let it stand in it overnight and then drained the oil out the next day.

I repeated this about 3 times and the rust soon dissapeared.

The next thing to do was clean off the paint.

I purchased a tub oil paint remover and gently applied it on until most of the paint literally dissolved off. After i did this, I gave the oil cooler a good clean with sand paper, and a wire brush. The wire brush proved to be most effective.

After most if the paint was off, particles were still trapped between the vanes of the cooler so I gave it a good clean with an air hose from an air compressor. I also sparayed pressurized air into the holes of the oil and this removed tiny particles trapped inside and ensured me that the oil cooler was not punctured/damaged in any way.

The last thing I did was heat briefly with a gas torch to remove any final particles and to ensure the thing was clean.

The above photos show the oil cooler after it has had a good clean. Next thing I'm gonna do is spray in blue, it's ready for use now :)

Next post is about the cleaning/removing of piant of the ignition coil.

My Engine

Hi,

This blog is about my main hobby, aviation.

I love microlights, as they are called here, or ultralights as they are called in the US.

I'm very interested in building my own ultralight, particularly the volksplane, however i'm still undecided.

I bought a VW 1200cc beetle engine that rolled off the factory line way back in 1964...

I paid 65 euros for it so it wasn't a bad buy. I've been working on converting it for use in flight.

The above photo is the engine with all the cooling tins/flaps removed for, the engine. I also removed the fan and oil cooler.
(the oil cooler needs to be placed horizontally eventually)
I gave the enigne a good cleaning with a wire brush and air hose.



The above picture shows all the stuff removed from the enigne. note that the ignition coil and the oil cooler have to be put back on the engine...but the total weight removed from the engine totalled to around 20kg, around 50 lbs.



The picture at the top is the engine stripped of almost everything. It should be below this text but blogger didnt allow me to move it down :s (yes, i put spark plugs on it)

The engine looks like a proper flat four aircraft engine.

I weighed it empty with my bathroom scales it weighs about 62 kilos, give or take a few kg..

In order to get it running, I still need a distributor, carburettor, fuel pump, igniton coil and cables connected to the spark plugs.

I now hope to try get it running and remove the flywheel to decrese around 7-10 more kg in weight.

see the following posts, coming soon

Christian