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Now that we have the main oil cooler components introduced it's time to pick a place to mount them in the RX-7. This is often tricky once you leave the world of bolt-on modifications behind and go custom because it's a domino effect, move one part and others will likely have to move because of it. So rather than making a custom bracket straight out of the gate that may or may not have worked in the end, we decided to fire up the CAD software and rapid prototype the parts on the 3D printer.
Here you see the computer and printer output of a 3D printed design. Once the original design is complete, the CAD file is exported into a stereolithographic (.stl) file and imported by the printing software. After some tuning by the user, the printing software converts the part to G-code (most commonly used by CNC machinists) and sends the output to the printer.
Fortunately for us, the initial location chosen for the oil thermostat worked out perfectly during mock-ups so there was 100% confidence in the bracket design before cutting any aluminum. Due to the potential time and material saved by making a prototype 3D printed component, expect to see many more printed prototypes throughout this build.
Once we knew the design would work, it was a simple process to take the basic shape and hole pattern of the 3D printed bracket and fabricate a functional bracket out of 3/16″ thick aluminum. By using three holes in the mounting bracket we were able to adapt the two holes in the thermostat to the two existing threaded holes in the chassis of the RX-7.
Here is the oil thermostat and its bracket mounted to the driver's side of the engine bay. Currently the three 1/8″ NPT ports are plugged, but at least two of these ports will be used for temperature sensors when we begin wiring up the engine and ECU.
The oil coolers are mounted to the RX-7 using simple, bent steel brackets. There isn't anything particularly special or exciting about the mounting of the coolers except the fact that it's one more thing on the list of to-do's that we get to mark complete.
