What's the best way to support/position an oil cooler?

Question

I'm installing an oil cooler on to a MK1 MX-5, that is used for Trackdays and weekly road use. I'm planning to install it where the AC condenser used to live, using two horizontal aluminium square tubes where the oil cooler will be bolted on.

Do I need to seal it's back against the radiator or leaving it free will have better performance?

It would be sitting a bit on the side to shield it a bit from direct hit of potential debris. How concerned should I be?

Finally, I keep seeing posts about vibrations that can damage these coolers. The kit I bought comes with some thick o-rings that suppose to go between the brackets and the oil cooler tabs.

Would these be sufficient or shall I add also some rubber bobbins?

I thought to make an update of how all this currently looks like: General frontal position

Gap between radiator and cooler, it needs drilling and mounting so just mocking things up with zip ties for now.

Factory rubber o-rings between bracket and oil cooler mounting tab

Extra rubber bobbins that I found laying around - probably from the AC condenser I took out ages ago

Thank you

Answer 1

You can attach it anyway you like and the cooler will provide some amount of cooling. I believe the way they are meant to be installed is directly in front of the radiator where it will get direct oncoming air flow from the front of the vehicle while moving as well as air being pulled through it from the fans while stopped or moving slow.

Transmission coolers I have bought before came with "staked" type zip ties. The lengthy part had a disk at the end. Then the "zip" portion was a disk with a zip-hole in the middle. You'd put the lengthy side through the radiator and subsequently through the cooler (with the padding in between the radiator and cooler). Then put the zip portion onto the lengthy part and hold the cooler to the radiator. It was a simple/cheap, but elegant solution for attaching it to the radiator and holding it securely in place.

To do this most effectively, the closer you have it to the radiator, the better. You shouldn't, however, have it directly touching the radiator (metal-to-metal contact). You want some sort of padding in between. As far as sealing it to the radiator, that really isn't necessary. You just want it close. I personally think I'd have something a little bit more beefy than o-rings between the cooler and the radiator (if that was what you were suggesting). You can easily get something more substantial off of Amazon. You could get some 1/4" thick rubber sheeting, with which you'd cut some small squares (1"x1") to put in between.

If you are going to use this vehicle for road course racing, I'd suggest you put some kind of mesh in front of the cooler so as to prevent debris striking it. If you really want it to work, you really need it to be directly in the air stream coming from the front of the vehicle. You might want to consider putting some wire mesh (you can get wire mesh easily which would work ... just get something thick enough to actually stop debris impacts) up front where the air paths are at. Directly in front of the cooler would work as well, though.