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  #1  
Old 01-29-2008, 02:14 PM
Jeff Vaughan's Avatar
Jeff Vaughan Jeff Vaughan is offline
 
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Location: West Chester, Pa
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Default Engine Dehydrator Home made?

Has anyone built an engine dehydrator? Are there plans available?
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  #2  
Old 01-29-2008, 04:00 PM
Jim Harchanko Jim Harchanko is offline
 
Join Date: Sep 2007
Location: Huntsville, AL
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Default Engine dehydrator

About 2 years ago, EAA Sport Aviation magazine had an article on how to build an engine dehydrator. They used an air pump for an aquarium, pumped air into the bottom of a bottle with desiccant and fed the output from the top of the bottle to the engine. My guess is that this article can be retrieved from the EAA web site.
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  #3  
Old 01-29-2008, 04:03 PM
RScott RScott is offline
 
Join Date: Aug 2005
Location: Estacada, OR
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Default

There was a writeup maybe 6 or 8 months ago--Sport Aviation? Kitplanes? Probably Sport Aviation because a guy in our EAA chapter built one and I doubt he takes Kitplanes because he flies a Cherokee. I have seen ads for these things factory built for a few hundred bucks. You can build one for less than $50.

Anyway, it's pretty simple. He used a large size pop bottle, filled it with silica gel. Get that at craft stores, maybe $15. It comes in white and it comes with maybe 2% blue indicator granules. You want the indicator granules so you can tell if the stuff needs to be dried. He filled a large size pop bottle with the silica gel, put some kind of filter over the end of a plastic tube and stuck it almost all the way into the bottle. The other end of the tube hooked up to an aquarium aerator pump. Another tube went from the pump to his oil filler spout thru a plastic cap he found that fit perfectly over the oil filler tube.

He runs the pump whenever the plane is parked. The pump draws very little current and it pumps a very small amount of dry air into the crankcase all the time.

He ran it for 3 months this summer and fall and the silica gel still showed blue. In western Oregon we don't see the humidity you folks east of the rockies see, so you might have to dry the silica gel more often.

I got silica gel for free from our shipping and receiving department where I used to work. Now I just need to build the thing. Thanks for the reminder, I'll get right on it.
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Last edited by RScott : 01-29-2008 at 04:08 PM.
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  #4  
Old 01-29-2008, 09:56 PM
RV10 4JF RV10 4JF is offline
 
Join Date: Oct 2007
Location: East Texas
Posts: 26
Default Here It Is

The article came out in the April 07 issue of Sport Aviation. This link has a picture, kit for sale and also lists the parts needed for assembly.

http://www.barkeraircraft.com/Engine-dryer-kit.html

The article recommends that you get a silent aquarium pump as opposed to a vibrating reed pump due to the noise that the reed pump makes.

Assembly:

Use a two-liter bottle with screw on bottle cap. Drill 2 3/16" hole in bottle cap. Cut 2" piece from rigid tubing and hot glue 2" piece in one hole and the 10" remainder in the other. Place Air Stone filter on end of long rigid tubing. Filter should be about 2" from bottom of bottle. Fill bottle with silica gel and attach cap. Use the tygon 1/8" flex tubing to connect pump to 2" piece. Rest of tubing goes from the long rigid piece to you engine oil filler cap or the engine vent.

When the silica turns blue, place silica in oven and heat at 350*F until it turns pink again.

Thanks for bringing this up as I wanted to build on of these and had forgotten about it.

JF
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  #5  
Old 01-29-2008, 10:22 PM
szicree szicree is offline
 
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Location: SoCal
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Quote:
Originally Posted by RV10 4JF View Post
When the silica turns blue, place silica in oven and heat at 350*F until it turns pink again.
Backwards.
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  #6  
Old 01-30-2008, 06:42 AM
RV10 4JF RV10 4JF is offline
 
Join Date: Oct 2007
Location: East Texas
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Quote:
Originally Posted by szicree View Post
Backwards.

Just quoting what was in the article. So, whatever silica is purchased, just find out how it looks when it is saturated with moisture. Then place it in the oven to return it to its original condition.

JF
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  #7  
Old 01-30-2008, 12:58 PM
RScott RScott is offline
 
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Location: Estacada, OR
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There was a correction in a later issue about the color of the silica gel. Blue is good, pink is wet & needs to be dried.
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  #8  
Old 02-01-2008, 10:31 AM
DSmith DSmith is offline
 
Join Date: Feb 2006
Location: Panama City Beach, FL
Posts: 129
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I built this from the article in Sport Aviation and it was easy to do. Here in Florida you have to bake the pellets pretty often to dry them out. Get enough silica pellets to fill the 2 quart bottle a couple times so you can bake one while the other one is doing it's job. You can get one of these from ACS for $200.00+ but you can build it for less than $30.00.
Danny
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  #9  
Old 12-28-2008, 04:48 PM
dmontgom dmontgom is offline
 
Join Date: Dec 2008
Location: Oak Park, IL
Posts: 1
Default Engine Dehydrator

Just built one of these this weekend. I'll be interested how it does in the cold damp Illinois winter.

If you buy the silica crystals at Michael's, they are in the flower drying department. They are in a canister labelled "Flower Drying Art". The staff didn't know what i was talking about and it took a while to find them. Cabella's also has them available on their web site--for keeping guns dry while stored in gun cases.
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  #10  
Old 12-28-2008, 06:59 PM
CESSNADON CESSNADON is offline
 
Join Date: Jan 2008
Location: Delaware
Posts: 79
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I've considered building a desicator for my airplane and thought that one would need to couple the exhaust pipe as well and the carb air intake to make it fool proof. Seems to me that a couple of the valves will be open which allows moisture into the cylinders to cause corrosion. I would think that if you interconnected the exhaust, intake and the crankcase vent to a gallon of silicagel the natural change of temperature would cause the engine to breathe through the silicagel and keep it dry...
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