Intercooler Mounting Brackets

10 Feb 2006 Intercooler Mounting Brackets

The intercooler is used to cool down the compressed air coming from the supercharger before it goes into the engine. Cooler air is more dense, so it helps produce more power.
The engine kit came with an intercooler that needs to be mounted on the firewall. The recommended mounting system is fine for the side by side aircraft, since they have a lot of structure at the upper side of the firewall. This is not the case on the RV8, since there is a baggage area just behind the firewall on the RV8.

I decided to have two tabs welded onto the bottom of the intercooler so that I could put the mounting brackets down low, where there is some structure behind the firewall. Here are a sequence of photos that show how I made and installed these mounting brackets.

Here’s one of those “Hey, FAA dude, I was here” photos.

All the ingredients are there – some 3/4″ angle, some 0.032″ aluminum sheet, some “lord mounts”, some screws, some rivets, and some bolts.

Here you can see where the mounts attach to the small amount of structure behind the firewall. The upper angle is 0.063″ thick, and quite stiff, but the bottom angle is only 0.032″ thick, and moves a bit more that I would have liked. It turns out that my “hang test” on the intercooler with a strap shows that it is plenty strong.

Mounts from the right side.

Here you can see the intercooler installed on the brackets.

A shot of the intercooler from below. You can see the tabs I had welded onto the intercooler. They are about the same size as the tabs on the top, but 1″ shorter. It cost me CHF 50.00 (about $35) to get them welded on.

Front view.

Right side view.

View from the bottom right.

There is still plenty of work to be done to build the transition from the intercooler to the intake duct on the cowl, which I have not even begun.