Living in New England the winters get cold. But I love flying in the winter, so I'm adding cabin heat to my firewall. This is a "Cabin Heat Shuttle Kit" from Aircraft Spruce ($53, p/n 05-12500).
The arm to attach to the flapper door is shown on the plans to be installed in such a way that the cable controlling it would be OUT (toward the passengers) 9 months of the year (warm weather; no cabin heat) and pushed IN during the winter (cold weather; provides heat). That's bass ackwards!!
So I'm going to wait until I put my firewall/engine together before I locate where this thing is going, and then decide how to re-fabricate the actuator arm so it works PROPERLY ("in" = no heat; "out" = heat).
- Photo #1 shows the kit as it comes from ACS. The rectangular piece with the cross hairs on it (cross hairs drawn by me) is aluminum, and it's the flapper door that opens or closes the hole in the firewall. That means in a fire the fire is going to burn right through it!
- So I took a piece of left over firewall stainless steel and cut out a rectangle to match the aluminum one from the kit. That way when it is closed it will keep the stainless steel firewall intact.
- It was not complicated to put this together, but to do a nice job it just took TIME. Hence the 3 hours logged.
- Photo #2 shows the flapper door closed (over the hole in the firewall).
- Photo #3 shows the flapper door open, redirecting warm air into the box and through the hole in the firewall.
I am NOT looking foward to cutting a 2" hole in the firewall. Cutting stainless steel is NOT high on the "fun" list.
