I have heard this undocumented claim many times. If you are looking for an excuse to fly then this is a good way to justify it. However, to put on 50 extra hours per year going no where and costing say $10,000 fuel and airframe and engine wear flying the most dangerous hours: takeoff, landing and close to heavier traffic make this approach questionable.
I did know a lot was crushed. Since 20+/- percent was reusable there probably was little corrosion damage unless these parts were just cosmetic. I would think the excavation would have never been started unless the excavators had good evidence that corrosion would be minimal.
Ice-breaker at parties?
It's not about the silica, it's about the system you build. A closed system with one end on the oil filler and the other on the crankcase breather tube will keep the total system humidity much lower than if the pump is pumping atmospheric air. The result is that the silica lasts longer. Additionally, I use about 7.5 lbs of silica in mine. So...it takes longer to saturate.
Yes. So I would think. A prop sock is pretty simple, cheap, and easy to put on... but even so, I don't know if it's worth the effort.
That's pretty easy in cold weather. I don't plug in the heater until daytime temps here in Ottawa are regularly below 5°c, and it keeps everything in the engine compartment warm to the touch, so at least 10°c above dewpoint even on "warm" days in late fall/winter/early spring.
But then you're warming up the engine with every flight, creating lots of moisture as a byproduct of combustion, then letting it cool enough that all the moisture condenses on surfaces.
Not a problem. When the engine cools....The moisture will freeze/vaporize out. Corrosion stops.
It will evaporate or sublimate eventually, but that happens more slowly at cool temperatures than warm ones.
Keeping the heater plugged in is one way keeps the engine temp above the dew point and prevent condensation. Other way is to decrease the humidity in the engine. I have a Rieff Turbo XP (soon to be on a Switcheon so I don't have to drive to the airport for my 4-hour warmup) and a dehydrator that I built to prevent condensation by lowering the crankcase humidity. I hook up the dehydrator within minutes after putting the plane back in the hangar and it runs 24-7 when the plane isn't flying.
A "deep freezer" would have to be near absolute zero. While chemical processes no doubt slow down as it gets colder, it's on a bigger scale. Going from 70*F to 30*F is a lot to us. Our engines have temps from 300-1500*F. On that scale, a difference of 40*F makes a negligible difference in the speed of chemical processes.
Ummm, I think flying the plane warms the engine up too....that’s the point. If you want your engine to last forever and never warm up, then follow these instructions.
You're agreeing with my point. If an engine stayed cold all the time in the winter, it would be fine without an engine heater. But since we do like to actually fly our planes, it's good to leave the engine heater all the time when we're not flying in cold weather, so that the engine doesn't cool below the dewpoint between flights.
the colder the air.....it can not contain moisture. Plain and simple physics.
Exactly. And if the surrounding air is relatively dry, heating something is a great way to remove the moisture from it (whether it's laundry hanging in the sun on a line, or wet mittens sitting on a heat vent in the winter).
Exactly right. So as the air cools, the moisture condenses and settles on a cool surface instead, as we've all seen with dew on morning grass, or frost on a car windshield. If you keep the surface warmer than the dewpoint, the moisture won't settle on it (e.g. if you have a ceramic heater in your car overnight, you won't wake up to frosted windows).
Only if there is a source of water to evaporate. As someone else mentioned, heating homes cause the relative humidity to go down greatly.
If the whole engine is warm (heated hangar), no temperature differential, so no cycle.
Argon or nitrogen shouldn't make any difference if you are simply displacing oxygen. A liquid nitrogen tank will provide gaseous nitrogen for a month (whether you use it or not). When the gas flows out of the engine, it gets replaced. I use a setup with a LN2 tank to run several mass spectrometers and light scattering detectors, each needing several liters a minute of gas @STP. Overall, cheaper than tanks, and easier to replace, too.
Even here in Minnesota it occasionally get warm and, according to you and several of the other physicists in this thread, will therefore contain moisture. Now...plugging in the heater in your plane 24/7 will still keep its internals above the dewpoint, so no condensation. Do you propose keeping the heater plugged in year round?
That point seems to be escaping several people in this thread...
Think about fish. How do they "breathe"? Oxygen dissolves in water, as does nitrogen and other gasses.
There's something missing in the bolded statement. I read it as "it gets warm, so moisture increases", which isn't what you meant to say.
Yes. An internal combustion engine is like a fish
No one said that, nor implied that. Merely an observation that oxygen dissolves in water, and trying to straighten out some of the bad science here in this thread. The comment about the fish was an attempt to show that the animal gets oxygen from someplace.Yes. An internal combustion engine is like a fish
If you use the plane, it is perhaps more of an issue. You have the same moisture from combustion products, and colder temperatures to condense it even more.
Won't hurt anything, at least, to use the dehydrator.
