J

John Courte

Well Known Member
The area under the cowling seems like a hellish box of heat and wind.

Are zip ties and plastic spiral wire wrap under there OK or will they become brittle and break? Is there a special grade to use? What are best practices for securing wiring and hoses to intake tubes and engine mount?

cheers,
-John
 
The white spiral is usually polyeth. It drips pretty good when you heat it. Your gonna find everyone on here favoring a bunch of Adel clamps & judicious use of Ty=raps.
 
I've used the spiral wrap to keep wires bundled FWF, but use adel clamps and occasionally zip ties to attach things to the engine mount etc. The white stuff does get soft and deform if it's too close to a heat source.

greg
 
I used tefzel, hylar and regular ties depending on location. I also used orange silicone tape and adel clamps. Any material closer than 4-5" from exhaust should be protected. Local airflow will affect material temps. Don't forget cowl heat shield. My alternator surface temp exceeded 300F due to cyl #1 exhaust pipe radiant heat. I will be installing a shield here. I have temp labels on everything including brake calipers. The real test will be this summer. Some spiral wrap 4" away from exh started melting near cowl outlet. This is during 30-50F surface temps in phase 1.
 
What is a Temp Label? I can picture something that changes color with temp, and you can read it later:confused:

Part numbers and sources appreciated!
 
Captain Avgas said:
All of my FWF zip ties are high temperature Tefzel (they're blue colour). Stein sells them. They're the go.
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Not only that, Stein's are competitively priced. I tried sourcing them elsewhere since we buy them by the truckload where I work. Not enough savings, and too large a minimum order, to make it worth the bother.
 
Just a heads up for those who were like me in the early phases: if tie-wrapping anything to the engine mount, put some sort of padding (I used the silicone tape that adheres to itself) around the engine mount before securing the tie-wrap. Without a barrier, the tie-wrap can trap grit, rotate, vibrate and start sawing on the engine mount.

All Best

Jeremy
 
jjconstant said:
Just a heads up for those who were like me in the early phases: if tie-wrapping anything to the engine mount, put some sort of padding (I used the silicone tape that adheres to itself) around the engine mount before securing the tie-wrap. Without a barrier, the tie-wrap can trap grit, rotate, vibrate and start sawing on the engine mount.

All Best

Jeremy
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Good call Jeremy. Totally agree with this as I have seen the damage gritty tie wraps can do to an engine mount.
 
One thing I learned...

On our aerostat, is if you're going to use zip ties, get a zip tie gun. You can set the tension to anything you wish and it automatically cuts the ties off flush. No snagging and such. We use 'em so the tie ends won't scuff or tear the fabric on the balloon. Do a search on zip tie guns and you'll find several.
 
RonH said:
On our aerostat, is if you're going to use zip ties, get a zip tie gun. You can set the tension to anything you wish and it automatically cuts the ties off flush. No snagging and such. We use 'em so the tie ends won't scuff or tear the fabric on the balloon. Do a search on zip tie guns and you'll find several.
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Panduits are nice, but spendy. Can be had used on Ebay though, and they work very nicely to minimize the "razor blade effect" that zip ties can create.

McMaster-Carr has flame-retardant Halar mesh sleeving rated to 300 degrees and PEEK mesh sleeving rated to 500 degrees. I used some of the former to group bundles of wires.
 
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