13brv3

13brv3

Well Known Member
Am I the only one who thinks Satan himself must have come up with the cooling baffle design :eek:

MAN, I hate building these things. I see it as a test of patience, and I guess I'm failing the test. It's just hard to imagine how long these take to make...

OK, I'm better now. Proceed with your lives :p

Rusty (wondering if it's too late to switch to a rotary engine)
 
13brv3 said:
Am I the only one who thinks Satan himself must have come up with the cooling baffle design :eek:

MAN, I hate building these things. I see it as a test of patience, and I guess I'm failing the test. It's just hard to imagine how long these take to make...

OK, I'm better now. Proceed with your lives :p

Rusty (wondering if it's too late to switch to a rotary engine)
Click to expand...

I just finished them myself, it sure was a test.

Look at it this way, at least you're not having to make them from scatch! Imagine how long that would take.
 
Yes it is hard to believe that the baffle kit is a kit. I did mine over 10 years ago and I hated it. I think I could have made them from scratch faster. I thought that the baffle kit got better over time but sounds like yours did not.

Mine have held up well after 1,936 flying hours. No cracks. Yes a few screws have fallen out and been replaced.
 
I agree!

my wings are on, cowling is 97% didn't care for that part either.. prop and spinner are on, at the airport , I miss being at home in my garage.. and I can't seem to finnish.. stuck..
Just got home from the airport..
Yeah I needed to scream too~! thanks for getting it started.. :) one of those days when everything goes crappy and you think , man today is not my day better quit now before I ruin something really bad..


Danny..
 
A better man....

:D

Yes indeed!! Don't you really think that you're a better man for enduring it!??

Just stand back, poke out your chest as you admire the finished product and think......."I'm good!!"

"BAFFLING".........a very appropriate word!

Cheers,
 
misery loves company

Thanks for all the comments. I'm glad to see that I'm not the only one frustrated by this seemingly simple task.

On the first RV-8, I had a week of vacation coming up, and figured I'd whip those baffles out in a couple days :rolleyes: Wrong :confused: I still have my builders log from that week, but probably couldn't post it here due to the language it contains :p

Years later, I had hoped the "kit" would have improved as much as the rest of Van's kit has, but it just hasn't happened. In all fairness though, I can't see how they could improve it too much more, unless they tried to make a specific set of baffles for each model. Even then, there would be a lot of fitting and trimming involved, which is what takes all the time.

I also hoped that my previous experience, and pictures would make it easier this time. To some extent that's true, but it's not a significant time savings so far.

Oh well, as my manager keeps saying (I think it's our company motto) "It is what it is".

Cheers,
Rusty (install, measure, remove, trim, repeat...)
 
Scratch Made

Paul Eastham said:
I just finished them myself, it sure was a test.

Look at it this way, at least you're not having to make them from scatch! Imagine how long that would take.
Click to expand...
I being the cheap type made mine from scratch. It took about 8 hours to cut and bend the parts and another day to put them together on the engine.

Gary
 
Scratch vs. Kit

We used the baffle kit for the O-320 but had to make one from scratch for the O-235 Lycoming engine as we did not find a kit specific to the O-235. I am not sure which was better. I am almost leaning towards the scratch built and this allows the "oooh" factor when you state "it was built from scratch".

Besides, my building partner (Todd) did all the forming work on the baffles while I did the "gopher" work and applied band aids to his cuts.

Pat Garboden/Todd Wiechman
Ozark, MO
RV9-A 942WG (reserved) O-235
RV9-A 942PT (reserved) O-320
 
Made mine from Sam James drawings

Bought some flat alu and used the templates that come with the james cowl/plenum to make my own.

Not too bad even with the mistakes on the drawings.

Frank
 
Okay, here's a total newbie question... what is a "Baffle" ?
Maybe someone could put a photo up? Why are these apparently so hard to make?
 
For me, the baffle parts were well done. It was the drawings which left a lot to be desired. If it wasn't for builders websites I might still be baffled. All the back and forth trimming was a pain. After that you have to wrestle with the seal material. My next RV will have an alum. plenum.
 
Under cowl

Phil,
If you've seen an engine on an air cooled airplane uncowled, the aluminum side skirts with the black or grey rubber on them all make up part of the "Baffling" to direct the incoming air down through the cylinders for cooling purposes. The rubber skirt is supposed to seal against the upper cowl forcing the air down through the cyls.

The kits come precut but oversized and usually take from one week to a month to get to fit correctly and generally one of the difficult tasks to do,
 
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