Give one of these a try!
http://aircraftspruce.com/catalog/eppages/casedry.php

wirsig wrote:Give one of these a try!
http://aircraftspruce.com/menus/search.php

That's the search page

a64pilot wrote:

wirsig wrote:Give one of these a try!
http://aircraftspruce.com/menus/search.php

That's the search page

I guess you are supposed to search for the answer. What was the question?
tom

Sorry about that, I just copied that url from my address bar after doing a search. Give this a try. I'll edit my first link also.
http://aircraftspruce.com/catalog/eppages/casedry.php

What situation is worse for the engine?

Leaving the Reiff or Tanis plugged in all the time so the plane can be flown when the opportunity arises.

Or

Flying half the time, as the above option, because the engine needs to be preheated and the opportunity passes.

Posted: Sun Dec 30, 2007 2:12 pm

I flew a Beaver for a number of years that still had the dilute switch in it, as well as one 185.

What is a dilute switch? It sort of sounds like something that clicks in my brain every day at about 1700 hours...

Hammer wrote:What is a dilute switch? It sort of sounds like something that clicks in my brain every day at about 1700 hours...

It's a fuel line/pump that squirts avgas into your oil sump to dilute the engine's oil, thus making the engine easier to spin and start when cold. Once up and running the gasoline is burned/evaporated off and oil viscosity goes back to normal. It used to be up north, and maybe still is a common feature on round engines down south, but like MTV said, you, the pilot, were threatened with death if you ever started a cold engine using the dilute switch. Now you preheat.

Those of you with older airplanes and original POH's should have the dilution tables, giving switch times/air temps/max oil level for the engine. I think some operators used to pre-dilute when in cold climates by filing the sump on shutdown while the engine was still warm.

Gump

DEDICATED TO ALL THOSE WHO FLEW BEHIND ROUND ENGINES, better known as piston pounders, recips, oil leakers, etc.

We have to get rid of those turbines, they're ruining aviation and our hearing...

A turbine is too simple minded, it has no mystery. The air travels through it in a straight line and doesn't pick up any of the pungent fragrance of engine oil or pilot sweat.

Anybody can start a turbine. You just need to move a switch from "OFF" to "START" and then remember to move it back to "ON" after a while. My PC is harder to start. (The first No Brainer)

Cranking a round engine requires skill, finesse and style. You have to seduce it into starting. It's like waking up a horny mistress. On some planes, the pilots aren't even allowed to do it... (and for good reason).

Turbines start by whining for a while, then give a lady-like poof and start whining a little louder.

Round engines give a satisfying rattle-rattle, click-click, BANG, more rattles, another BANG, a big macho FART or two, more clicks, a lot more smoke and finally a serious low pitched roar. We like that. It's a GUY thing...

When you start a round engine, your mind is engaged and you can concentrate on the flight ahead. Starting a turbine is like flicking on a ceiling fan: Useful, but, hardly exciting.

When you have started his round engine successfully your Crew Chief looks up at you like he'd let you kiss his girl, too!

Turbines don't break or catch fire often enough, which leads to aircrew boredom, complacency and inattention. A round engine at speed looks and sounds like it's going to blow any minute. They sometimes do. This helps concentrate the mind! It also contributes to the illusion of DAP, or Dirty Airplane Parts, quite fondly revered by some.

Turbines don't have enough control levers or gauges to keep a pilot's attention. There's nothing to fiddle with during long flights. We usta tell the newbies "we'll let you sit up here, but dont' touch anything".

Turbines smell like a Boy Scout camp full of Coleman Lamps. Round engines smell like God intended machines to smell.

Anonymous

I think oil dilution started in WWII. The Russians were flying when the Germans couldn't get theirs started. This went on for quite a while until a captured Russian spilled the beans about thinning the oil with fuel so you could start the thing. I had an old ME-110 pilot tell me this in Hanau Germany when I was stationed there, not sure it is true, but the old man had no reason to lie. He and others were interesting to talk to, I wish I had recorded those conservations.

On an airplane with a dilute system, when you were preparing to shut down for the day, you engaged the dilute switch for a specified period of time. This pumped gasoline into the oil sump, diluting the oil. You continued to run the engine for a minute or so to fully mix the gas/oil mixture, then shut down.

In the AM, cold engine--just crank er up. As the engine came up to temperature, the avgas in the oil would cook off, leaving plain old oil again.

Problem was, the engine was still cold as all getout and a lot of wear occurred after starting a diluted engine if it hadn't been pre-heated.

Gump,

I loved that little story. Thanks,

MTV

On my old '52 170B I had no crankcase or cylinder heater so I rigged up a 120VAC clothes dryer heater with a fan of 1200 watts that I would stick under the cowel about an hour before flight. On my '05 Citabria it has a crankcase heater and cylinder bands for preheating the engine that was installed at the factory. I believe the $2 clothes dryer heater with about 20" of scat tube to direct the warm air under the enginr does a better job of warming the whole engine than the high dollar engine heater. I also place a 800 watt heater in the cabin to warm it up about an hour before flight...I work better when I am warm too. When it gets really cold and I know I am not going to fly for a while, I take the battery out and put it in my heated shop. The last Gill 25 battery I had lasted 9 years.
Last but not least I have a programmable timer that I set that turns on about 1 to 2 hours before flight time.

hicountry wrote

When it gets really cold and I know I am not going to fly for a while, I take the battery out and put it in my heated shop.

What do you consider to be really cold?

Our temps have varied a lot this winter and I haven't pulled the battery yet. But I think about it almost every day that I don't fly.

Bill

Flat Country Pilot wrote:hicountry wrote

When it gets really cold and I know I am not going to fly for a while, I take the battery out and put it in my heated shop.

What do you consider to be really cold?

Our temps have varied a lot this winter and I haven't pulled the battery yet. But I think about it almost every day that I don't fly.

Bill

In Watson Lake one winter I took my car battery inside the motel room when the temps went south of -60F for the night. Plunked it back in in the morning- immediately the cd player started shrieking like a banshee, and the LCD looked like it had shattered into a thousand pieces. Noise stopped after about 10 minutes. LCD got better after about two weeks. I guess the electronics didn't like that too much.

The only times I've pulled my plane battery is for extended storage of the plane. Otherwise it sits outside through spells of -40, and when it warms back up around zero I preheat thoroughly, start 'er up, and fly. Having to put the battery back in seems like one more obstacle to flying when I already have to pull covers, brush snow, preheat engine, unstick skis, maintain a ski strip, etc, etc...

Below 0 Deg F and too much snow to shovel in front of the hangar door. I realize in ND that might be 6 months out of the year....hopefully NOT!

We have the Reiff cylinder & oil pan heater on our Maule as well. We have it on 2 different controls...timer and thermostat. The timer is programmed to turn on the power from 4 am - 8 pm. That pretty much means we will have a warm engine anytime we want/need to fly. Plugged into the timer outlet is a thermostat outlet which is set at 40 degrees. This means that the heater will only come on between the hours of 4 am and 8 pm IF the temperature is below 40 degrees. We also have a thermal blanket over the cowl and the dipstick pulled. When the heater is on the entire cowling is warm. We had the same setup on our Cessna 210 for years and did not notice any corrosion. All that being said, we do live in northern TN so we do not face the same temps as some of you fellows, however it has been below freezing consistently (in the teens some days) here for the last week.

I dropped an email to Tannis to get their position on using the heater. They said that as long as you are flying once a week you can leave it plugged in. They went on to say that it won't affect the life of the heater.

Sound good to me. It is much easier to go down and unplug it when not flying often than to get there ahead of time to plug it in. I looked into those telephone dial ups but we do not have a land line to the hangar and my cell phone just does not get reception there.

In the past I have seen the most trouble with water in the oil when the engine is run but not run long enough to get the oil temperature up...a kind of milky looking residue when you pull out the dipstick or when you drain the oil. This goes for water cooled engines as well as air cooled engines. I always run the engine long enough to bring up the oil temperature (180-200) to drive off the moisture if possible. This may involve restricting air flow to the oil pan and oil coolers and on some engines restricting air flow to the cylinders. I very seldom fly when it is 20 deg F or lower but I know some fly much colder. I put the factory oil cooler plate on below 40 deg F to bring the oil temp up.
I noticed the C170 with blankets over it........do you cover the oil pan air inlet and restrict air flow to the cylinders? I built my own oil pan cover but never used cylinder restricters as shown in the original Cessna Manual.

Cold is relative to where you live. For some cold is 35 F and for others cold starts at -10F.

I preheat below 40 F. I think about installing a Reiff but continue to use my 1500w space heater old blankets to preheat. I might only preheat for an hour over 30 F and 3 to 4 hours below 0 F to 5 F.

I pull the battery below 0 F, if I'm not going to fly soon.

Having the plane inside makes a big difference, even if the hangar is not heated. But, cold is still cold, wether that is -10 F or 35 F.

Bill