Harold Woods wrote: > A friend in our local RAA club installed a corvair in his homebuilt. He had cooling problems. Any time he went faster than 80 mph his engine got hot. He tried many things ( He is a professional engineer), but finally gave up and sold it. Is cooling normally a problem? If not, what is the secret?<
CHTs or oil temp? Cooling is not a problem with a Vair. Most people just baffle it like any other engine to force whatever comes in the inlets to go through the heads and cylinders, as well as through the oil cooler (in it's stock location) and that's plenty good enough. Some of us have remoted the cooler and run a 2" Scat line to it, and that's fine too. My oil temp is a little on the low side, so I may decrease it to a 1.5" Scat line. One effect that some people never consider is that if you have an inlet on the bottom that is open to the underside of the cowling, you are pressurizing the bottom of the engine, which impedes the flow from the top side, which can cause overheating. The only inlet I have on the bottom is sealed and runs right into the airbox. I also have NACA ducts on the bottom that help suck air out of the bottom of the cowling, as well as drag reduction, but most Corvair installations don't go to this kind of trouble, and cool just fine. The guy may be an engineer, but I can't imagine why he couldn't figure out what his problem was... Mark Langford, Huntsville, Alabama see KR2S project N56ML at http://home.hiwaay.net/~langford email to N56ML "at" hiwaay.net --------------------------------------------------------------
