Heat exchanger muff project

[mike.smith]

Wes,

If you seem to have the magic bullet I'd love to see pictures of your setup! You're the only person I've seen success from, with empirical data to back it up.

[WesRagle]

Hi Mike,

Wes,

If you seem to have the magic bullet I'd love to see pictures of your setup! You're the only person I've seen success from, with empirical data to back it up.

When you think of the heater core in your car, what do you think of? Maybe a nice heat exchanger with 160 to 230 Deg. F. liquid flowing through it? Sounds a lot like the Oil Cooler most of us carry around on our airplanes all the time.

Here is how I did it.

I bought what I consider to be a quality oil cooler. They aren't that expensive. If you consider the cost of a standard VW oil cooler and add the price of one of those god awful expensive heat muffs it's probably a wash.

Ref.
https://www.chiefaircraft.com/aec-8000075.html?gclid=EAIaIQobChMI3JzQpa-C9AIV3m1vBB1YnAKOEAQYBiABEgKWhfD_BwE

I built a plenum on each side of the oil cooler and mounted it to the firewall. Here is a pic of the assembly while I was trying to lay out my firewall.



As shown, the output is routed to one of the simple cabin heat flappers (via a 2.5" to 2" silicon reducing elbow).

The input to the oil cooler is via a 2.5" NACA vent. I don't like having to drop hoses when I remove the cowl so I hinged the the NACA vent to the firewall and pulled it to the cowl side with four quarter turn fasteners.





That's really all there is to getting good cabin heat. It's simple and neat without SCAT running all over the place.

Problems I had ...

I didn't lay things out as well as I could have and the path from the NACA to the cooler inlet is a little convoluted. So, I had to add a little scoop to augment the airflow through the cooler.



I couldn't find a rigid 2.5" NACA so I had to buy some appropriate aluminum tubing and rivet it to the NACA outlet so I would have something solid to clamp to.

Tongue in Cheek -> I'll never understand why folks keep trying to heat their airplane by sticking a tin can on the tailpipe when they have a perfectly good heater core just begging to be used.

Wes

[Mike53]

Brilliant!!!!!!

[BRS]

Wes,
Thanks for posting that wonderful solution. What caught my attention was that I have two heater cores on my bench which I took photos of yesterday so I could sell them. Seems I'll have to hold onto one of them. I don't yet have any heat.

Q: Did you just plumb the "heater core" in series with an unmodified oil cooler?
Q: When you don't want heat does the valve just block the air to the cabin or does it dump it overboard like many purchased heat valves?
Q: Did you use a 7 layer core as in your link?

?: This could possibly be used during the summer to augment your oil cooler on a hot day's climb?

[kmacht]

Wes,

What temperatures do you typically fly in with the heater and what temperature air do you get coming out the vent. When Mike says he hasn’t been able to get a heat muff to work it’s likely because he lives in the northeast where daytime highs are below the freezing mark during the winter. Your solution seems pretty elegant but I wonder how well it still warms things up when the outside air temp drops into the 20s as typical when flying up north.

Keith
#554

[WesRagle]

HI Brock,

Q: Did you just plumb the "heater core" in series with an unmodified oil cooler?
A: No, I only have one heat exchanger. I referred to the oil cooler as a heater core trying to make the point that it could be used for both.

Q: When you don't want heat does the valve just block the air to the cabin or does it dump it overboard like many purchased heat valves?
A: The "heat valve" is a purchased parts that dumps the output overboard if not needed.

Q: Did you use a 7 layer core as in your link?
A: I think so. It's been a while. The oil cooler is made by AAVID NIAGARA out of Niagara Falls , NY. Part number 20002A. When I purchased it I was just looking for the smallest "real" oil cooler I could find.

Hi Keith,

Q: What temperatures do you typically fly in with the heater and what temperature air do you get coming out the vent.
A: Ref. https://sonexbuilders.net/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=6505#p49358

Wes

[BRS]

Wow, Wes,

If I had seen your pictures on this 3 months ago it would have made a big difference in how I modified the cowl when installing the RevMaster. Had to bump the cowl for their oil cooler. Ha, I should have just removed the cooler.

I can see though that I might do that anyway, in the future, just that I'll have some needless cowl warts.

It's stuff like this that make these 'type' forums so valuable.

[WesRagle]

HI Guys,

Brilliant!!!!!!

It's stuff like this that make these 'type' forums so valuable.

Thanks for the kind words.

Getting enough cabin heat from a VW has been a long standing problem. Back when I built #664 I was determined that I would have enough cabin heat. So, I came up with using the oil cooler for cabin heat. I planed on adding a heat muff in series with the oil cooler if the oil cooler alone wasn't enough.

It turned out that the using the oil cooler alone was enough. So, the 15 year old heat muff got repurposed to provide carb heat for the Zenith on my Onex.



Wes

[Scott Todd]

I have the top mount oil cooler on my Onex and I keep thinking about making a simple diverter box to direct it to a piece of scat tubing to the lower the cabin. There is plenty of room there and I thought I could make it easily removable for maintenance or summer flying. Hmmm...

[mike.smith]

Hi Mike,

When you think of the heater core in your car, what do you think of? Maybe a nice heat exchanger with 160 to 230 Deg. F. liquid flowing through it? Sounds a lot like the Oil Cooler most of us carry around on our airplanes all the time.

Here is how I did it.

That's cheating! Just kidding... Obviously this isn't a "heat muff" solution, but it's obviously a viable solution. Might be less practical to retrofit into a completed engine compartment, but certainly a possibility for those who haven't done their firewall forward, yet.

For anyone who has been trying to get a heat muff to work, I did a video walk-through of my setup, which only works marginally well.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I29LCu-c_Bc