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How good is your seal

erikpmort

erikpmort

Well Known Member
Alright time to play the brag pipes. How cold can you see on your OAT probe and still maintain a comfortable cabin temp ? For me it's only about 30 degrees. I've done the canopy seals, but there are still more leaks. The single muff install puts out good heat but I sure need it to be sealed a lot better. I've read I think almost every post on what people do but it seems it's never enough. 2.5 hour instrument flights with instructor was cold today saw down to about 20 ar 10k and the feet get cold man
 
During a sunny clear day, I'm ok down to below zero with some help from the greenhouse. At night, maybe 20 degrees or so. Slider, dual heat muffs.

The Van's plastic air vents don't seal well, so I didn't use them for the fresh air vents and instead used Stein's aluminum ones which seal extremely well. The plastic vents went down underneath on the heater outlet and let me aim the air quite well.
 
Get a set of push tube seals, the aluminum gasper vents mentioned above, and seal any hole you can find.

Then wrap just your heater muff in exhaust wrap, available at most auto parts place. The aluminum heat muff gives up a lot of heat when it is cold.

The other thing I did was to install the Classic Aero interior. My wife has been comfortable down to 6 above on the ground and colder as we went up.
 
If it's 30 I usually end up turning my heat off, at less than 20 degrees I usually keep the heat full on and crack my fresh air vents to keeep a comfy temp. I do have heated seats which are GREAT at first, but even on low I usually turn them off after 30 minutes.
I plugged my spar holes in the fuse but never got to the aileron boots since I don't really need them. I did seal the rollbar and slider rails as Pat Hatch suggested here: (works awesome and really easy)
http://www.vansairforce.com/community/showthread.php?t=104766

I saw you had a slider, do you have a roll bar seal and seals along your slider rails?
 
If you have FI and can run LOP, it makes a HUGE difference in cabin heat. The additional 200F or so on the EGTs really improves that heat reclaim of the exhaust pipes. It's like a night vs day difference for my bird.
 
Stuffing a stainless steel kitchen pot scrubber inside my cabin heat muff helped the heat output noticeably. It slows down the air flowing thru the muff to give it more time to pick up more heat from the exhaust pipe.
 
Neal@F14 said:
Stuffing a stainless steel kitchen pot scrubber inside my cabin heat muff helped the heat output noticeably. It slows down the air flowing thru the muff to give it more time to pick up more heat from the exhaust pipe.
Click to expand...

Or just use 1 1/2 scat to the inlet side.......
 
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