Heater

[David Henderson]

I have two heat muffs but they are both less than 6" long. No choice there, so I hooked them up in series in an attempt to improve cockpit warmth. My question is; has anyone attempted to re-route exhaust air from the oil cooler into the cockpit? I have a plan using louvers etc. but if someone has already done this, I need to hear about successes and failures.

 

[Norman CYYJ]

I think you would be wise to connect the heaters in parallel. You would get more heat. As for running the heat from the oil cooler you run the risk of engine fumes in the cabin which is not good and if there is an oil leak the cabin will fill with oil mist.

 

[Pilottonny]

Hello,

Steve Arnold has done that (RV9A with Wilksch Diesel), no heat at all ! Because you can only tap some of the hot air off to the cabin, (you need a good bypass to make sure the oilcooler keeps "cooling"), you will have a problem of getting enough pressure to blow air into the cabin.

Two heatmuffs in series sound good. If you still have doubts, get a Vetterman exhaust with silencers. The silencers have heatmuffs to actualy cool them, aparently they supply loads of heat!.

Regards,

PilotTonny.

 

[kentb]

Hello, Dave

A friend of mine put a coarse steel wool inside his heat muff. This should allow more heat transfer from the pipe to the air moving through.

Kent

 

[Vern]

Oil cooler as source for cabin heat-bad idea!

Our most inventive and creative RV Squadron member built his RV-8 with the IOF-360 oil cooler as the heat source and found it unacceptable. He has since added electric seat heaters and mentioned that he intends to go back to the traditional Van's heat muff.

 

[Walt]

Ahhh, the joys of living in the North!

I just took my heat muff and plumbing out today and blocked the intake. Haven't used the heater for months and doubt I'll need it anytime soon. It took about 20 minutes to pull everything out and I'll reinstall it when it gets cold. The benefit is I can now block the intake and get a little more cylinder cooling going (we are looking at the 2 hottest months of the year still to come)

 

[f1rocket]

Two heat muffs in series gives me more heat than I can stand. If that doesn't work for you when the exhaust temp is well north of 1,000 dF, then I doubt the oil cooler air at about 300 dF is going to be much help.