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Preheater - new approach


GrassStripFlyBoy

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I've been using a small room heater for preheating, and was previously aiming it into the lower cowling opening from behind the nose gear.  Bent some aluminum to match the shape of radiator, and now blowing in from the front.  Used it for the first time today, much better performance, was 10F this morning and ran it a couple hours, good temp rise, quick start, and quick to hit 120F on the oil after start up.

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well done...you can also blow some of that warm air to the inlet that goes around the muffler.....pull the heat in the cabin and it will also warm your panel........this week ..at 5F ...the Dynon didn,t want to turn on ...it did after few minutes into the flight

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I have a foil dryer vent tube, and noticed it's about the same diameter as the muffler opening.  Was thinking I could loop a short run from that back to the inlet side of the heater to make it a closed loop and recirculate the air flow.  But, seeing how it worked so well, I don't think I'll mess with it any further.  I did pick up a very small room heater, like a third the size as this one, to toss in the cabin and preheat it, but have yet to use that.  

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  • 2 weeks later...
On 1/31/2022 at 12:25 PM, procharger said:

Light bulb and a blanket around cowl easy peesy

It needs to be 100w incandescent to do much good.  When I tried this I found the bulb burned out between trips to the airport and I arrived to a cold engine. 
 

I do what Tom suggested a while back…Harbor Freight heat gun on low blowing through a sceet tube.  Warms up enough to start  the engine in 30-45 minutes here in Georgia.

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2 hours ago, Roger Lee said:

Just remember heat guns and hair dryers were never design for continuous use and can either burn out or catch fire.

Yeah, I don’t leave them unattended!  Though remarkably my HF heat gun is still going strong after 7 years.  
 

I’d spring for a real preheat solution if I lived in the cold, but here in Georgia it’s not worth it for the 15 days a year I preheat.

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