Craig wrote: > After meeting with Mark Jones and seeing his plane last weekend I came up > with > the idea to use the heat output of the oil cooler for cockpit heat. Any > thoughts on why this may not be a good idea?
Conventional wisdom is that oil coolers simply won't provide nearly enough heat for really cold temperatures. Exhaust headers are running 1300 degrees or so, while the cooler in the winter might be 180 at the most. That'a a huge difference, and you are also limited by the cooler's surface area. There's a lot of exhaust pipe out there, and at least in my case, it's dirt simple to get the heat into the cabin from the exhaust. There's a reason why just about every factory plane (and others as well) use the exhaust pipe "stove" method, and it's effectiveness. Even Volkswagens and Corvairs use it for a reason, and given the liability of carbon monoxide poisoning, you know there has to be a strong postive on the side of exhaust stove heating. Other than Jon's example, I think you'll be hard pressed to find many instances of the oil cooler being used for cabin heat, especially in colder climates. Mark Langford N56ML "at" hiwaay.net website at http://www.N56ML.com --------------------------------------------------------
