Jerry Hey wrote:

I would appreciate the comments of pilots who are flying without a
thermostat.  Do you have adjustable cowl flaps for exit air or for
intake air?  If you do, is adjusting them a constant chore?   If you
don't have adjustable cowl flaps, then do you find  times on cold
days when your operating temps are too low?  I am sitting on the
fence as far as a thermostat is concerned.  It offers a lot of
convenience but is also something that could fail.   I have 250,000
miles on my Nissan and my wife has the same on her Mitsobishi and we
have not had any thermostat problems.      Jerry

Do air cooled aircraft engines count Jerry? :-)

So far I have seen no rotary installations  with cowl flaps. I am not sure

why.

I guess after you do all that work installing the engine you don't
want to spend the extra time. In fact the only home built water cooled
AC engines I have seen with a cowl flap is the Lancair Tigress, the Legend
and a GM V6 from Canada.

BTW You could always use air cooled VW engine
thermostats to control the flaps.

Paul Lamar

Ed Anderson wrote:

Jerry, I fly without a thermostat and do not have cowl flaps.  But as Paul
suggested the VW thermostat bellows would work.  I actually acquired two but
never got around to cowl flaps as I had more serious problems to work for a
while.  The only time my temps are below 180F is on colder days and if
letting down with the power pulled back.  The coolant will sometimes drop to
140F, oil generally no lower than 160F.

  Nothing against a thermostat, I've tried it twice but for some reason
could not get it to work right.  I'll probably give it another try before
long as one reason to keep the coolant temp up is it provides heat for the
cockpit and is much cozier at 180F than at 140F {:>)

Ed Anderson

 
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