Rotec R2800 and Heat.

[dactel]

Hi Everyone,

I am strongly inclined towards installing a Rotec R2800 engine on my S7SS. I am wondering if anybody who has gone this route has successfully installed a cabin heat system to go with it. Scouring the web, I have not been able to find much of anything so far.

I am thinking of a couple of ways:

a) I would fabricate a shroud that would fit around the exhaust ring and feed the outside air through the shroud which in turn goes into a box where it would be mixed with unheated cabin air. Much like in C-172. Or

b) I'm not sure this would even be possible but I would install a heater core with a fan on it and route the engine oil through it (since this is an air cooled engine and there is no coolant). The oil coming out of this core would be fed back in prior to the engine oil filter. In this case I wonder if the core would be able to withstand the oil pressure. Should I use an oil cooler instead?

I welcome any idea.

Thanks in advance!

[N213RV]

I have yet to install heat in mine. I was leaning towards your option #1. I don’t have a ton of room between the collector ring and the aft cowling, so I am somewhat limited there. Lynn did this on his Rotec and it seems to be working well for him.

My oil temp gets a bit hot in he summer on long flights (like going to Oshkosh) so I am going to install a small oil cooler for summer use only. My concern with your option #2 is in the summer you won’t want the heat in the cabin, but you might need the oil cooling. In the winter you don’t need the cooling but the oil cooler will cool your oil even more. Seems like it might not be ideal for either flying condition.....

[dactel]

Searching further online, I finally found some interesting info about using oil cooler as cabin heat source on Vans aircraft:

http://www.vansairforce.com/community/showthread.php?t=26485&page=4

In it there is also a link to an article by somebody who did similar thing on his EZ, except that he went a step further to use it also as a heat dump device on hot day by diverting the heat output overboard using a flapper...