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I've never figured out why  some folks put oil cooler doors or other
movable devices on their aircraft in an attempt to control the oil
temperature.  My  IO-360 has a vernitherm that meters the oil to the cooler
to maintain the proper temperature and came standard with the engine.  If
the oil were too cool ,  the vernitherm would meter less oil to the cooler.
 Shutting off the air supply to the oil cooler would create less drag
however.  So, perhaps these doors should be called oil cooler drag
reduction doors rather than oil temperature control doors.  Am I missing
something here?  I selected an oil cooler known to be of adequate size.  I
sized the oil cooling air inlet NACA scoop so that the inlet area matched
the SCAT tubing cross sectional area.  The NACA scoop inlet area is the
depth of the scoop times the width not the area of the cutout.  It
apparently works good as I have oil temps that are correct in all flight
conditions.

I found the engine cowling to be the most challenging component  to fit to
the aircraft.  Although nobody wants to spend the money on an engine until
absolutely necessary, I feel that you need to have your engine hung prior
to fitting the engine  cowl.  I borrowed a prop just like the one I later
bought and made a plywood disk that defined exactly  where the back most
plane of the prop spinner would be and cut to the proper diameter.  This
disk was bolted to the engine crank flange with the proper forward/aft
spacing.  The plywood disk  was used as the clamping fixture to align the
forward upper and lower cowl.  Don't know how I could have done it any
other way.  

Jim Frantz
Lancair Network News