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Does anyone have a good photo of the left side of the factory Sonex turbo set up? I am looking to see how the oil separator is mounted and plumbed.

Sorry, no photo of the mounting. Plumbing is pretty straight forward, the one top fitting takes a 5/8" hose from the engine crankcase vent. One bottom fitting, also takes a 5/8" hose to overboard, exit the cowl area. And the second bottom fitting is a 1/2" NPT female that I installed a 1/2" NPT to -6 AN fitting and braided -6 hose that drains to the newly installed mini-sump (that contains the new oil filter).

The bottom of the oil separator must be mounted above the engine oil level in normal flight attitude. so it'll drain back into the sump.

Just found a photo: Go to the photo section here on the forum, go down to "SONEX OPEN HOUSE photos - redux" click on the link to Zenfolio in the first post, then go to page 12. on the bottom row is a photo of the bottom LH side of factory turbo engine.

Here's the picture referenced above, but it doesn't really show exactly where the can itself is mounted. Does anyone have a picture of the factory oil separator mounted somewhere that works well?

I'm laying out my firewall and trying to figure this out now. Any good reference to how high it actually needs to be mounted? The instructions say the return port needs to be above the normal engine oil level, but I'm having trouble visualizing that.

My real challenge is, I'm trying to avoid putting hardware through the upper firewall because my fuel tank is extremely close to the back side of it (like pretty much touching it). I'm thinking maybe I can mount it to the engine mount somehow, otherwise maybe I'll pull the tank and attach a couple pieces of square tubing, riveted from the inside.

Spaceman wrote:Here's the picture referenced above, but it doesn't really show exactly where the can itself is mounted.

That's the airplane that I flew to Sebring and Sun N Fun. I am fairly certain that the oil separator was mounted to the engine mount with a couple of Adel clamps. It's been a while, so my memory is a bit fuzzy. Unfortunately I don't have any photos of that airplane with the cowling off. But I'm pretty certain the can was mounted to the motor mount tubes.

On the red airplane we mounted the can to the firewall, as there is more room on the B model.

Gotcha, thanks! Clamping it to the engine mount might be the easiest way, plus then it could be mounted closer to vertical I think...

A-model turbo? I used 3 adel clamps (2 top, 1 bottom) onto the engine mount.





Mounting it this way gets it pretty close to in-flight vertical:

Oh yeah that looks good! I was thinking of mounting it to the firewall but it would be even farther from vertical once the tail is off the ground. Engine mount looks way better and easier.