It gets cold here in Wisconsin - Insulation?

Hey -9 ers, I am trying to decide if I need to install sidewall insulation to keep me warm flying here in Wisconsin winters. Can you tell me how effective the heat muff is for a 9? (o-320)

I have an o-320. I owned a cherokee and never had any trouble, but it did have mediocre insulation. I really don't want to install anything if I can help it.

Any suggestions or comments appreciated. Thanks

There are a number of earlier posts about heat in RV6/7/9s. One of them even discusses installing dual heat muffs for lots more heat in northern climes/climbs.

If you want to stay warm you need heavy clothing (not a bad idea from a survival perspective) or electrically heated seats (highly recommended).

The output from the cabin heat is not very strong. I have a spring wrapped around the exhaust to add some mass into the heat muff and my perception is that it puts out more heat than other RV's. I should go up on the same day as someone else and actually measure the temps, that would be a better datapoint.

Hans

Wisonsin Winter

Check out Larry Vetterman Web Site. He makes exhaust system with mufflers on which generate alot of cabin heat and reduce cabin noise levels.
http://www.vettermanexhaust.com/

Mufflers

My hangar mate has a 7A with vetterman muffler exhaust. It puts out copious amounts of heat. So much so, the cabin valve can not be run wide open even on the coldest days here in the hinterlands.

It sounds great, too.

OK down to 15F

I have a RV-6 with no insulation, RV-7 FWF kit, one heat muff, no spring and made my first flight in January. I was perfectly comfortable in January and February when flying off my 40 hours down to 15 F. My feet never got cold. I did wear a scarf around my neck due to a slight draft from around the rear edge of the sliding canopy.

One of the suggestions I got from this forum was to only use a 1" diameter hole in the aft right baffle for the air going to the heat muff even though the tubing is 2". This works well in restricting the volume of air through the muff. If too much air is directed through it will not heat up enough. Closing down the air intake will not change the amount of air going through the muff, it will only dump some of it out forward of the firewall.

how to hook up two mufflers?

Pete - does your mate with the mufflers have one cabin heat valve (thru the firewall) or two?

I want to have the mufflers on my 9A for heat and would love to see a descripiton of how this can best be done. I know there are 2 mufflers - is it best to run them in series thru a single firewall penetration or in parallel through two? Or does just 1 muffler produce enough heat and the other is used for carb heat?

My Skipper (with a little O-235) has a single muffler and produces as astonishing amount of heat. It's comfy to fly down to 10F easy. In fact the little bit of air that leaks thru the valve when it is OFF makes it way too hot in the summer. That's why I'm interested in mufflers on the 9A.

Any info / pictures of a 7/9 install with mufflers & carb heat would be great!