The Awl Bid'ness

We had the Memorial Day BTW shindig to prepare for, so I changed the oil in both of the currently serviceable trikes and added (re-added) the the long since bypassed oil cooler on Sponge Bob. The new oil cooler is an Empi 9291 shrink wrapped kit that includes an adapter to connect to the block and a remote oil filter adapter. There is an engine adapter already in place from the previous cooler and time and hose constraints have delayed the installation of oil filter at this time.

This cooler is a 8 pass unit, larger than the old one. Consequently, I needed to find another place to put it. There was room under the deck on the right side of the engine.

The bracket is bolted on one side to the box. I made a simple bracket for the other end.

Then I pretty much split the hose that came with the kit and plumbed it into the engine.

It didn't seem to take a lot of extra oil, but I'm guessing it's probably about 1/2 quart for the hose and cooler.

Next, I need to add some disconnect fittings into the lines so that removing the engine will not require either pulling the hoses or unbolting the cooler. Pegasus Auto Racing has some nice AN fittings for a reasonable price. I got four female hose ends and two male couplers. Not only can the cooler be removed, this configuration makes it fairly easy to bypass the oil cooler if the need arises again.

In less happy news, the oil leak from the rearish of the engine was not stopped by the replumbing, however having freshened the oil, it's now a bit more obvious that it may be transaxle oil rather than engine oil. The oil on the ground is black, but the oil on the dipstick is honey colored, even after 400 mile round trip. While this occurred to me earlier this week, I have not yet verified the theory. It should be pretty simple to check; transaxle oil smells horrible.