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Mike & Aneta's RV Projects
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Date: 10-11-2015
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Number of Hours: 3.00
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Manual Reference: Firewall Shield
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Brief Description: Marking and Cutting SS Sheet for Shield
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Today, I began work on the Firewall Shield I'm making. The firewall, as the name implies, is what protects the cabin from a fuel or oil-fed fire, should one occur, in the engine compartment. The firewall itself is constructed of stainless steel sheet, instead of aluminum, because SS has a much higher melting point than aluminum. However, the structural elements of the firewall (i.e. angles, stiffeners and brackets are all aluminum). So, we need something to prevent heat transfer to the firewall, which will in turn protect the structure and buy us more time to safely land the plane, in the case of an inflight fire in the engine compartment.
My plan is to sandwich a 1/8" thick sheet of Fiber Frax insulation, which has an extremely high temperature performance range, between the SS firewall structure and another, thinner sheet of SS sheet on the engine-compartment side. This assembly should perform in a fire much better than the standard Vans firewall. I've also taken the liberty of changing out the Vans provided heater bypass valves, which are made of aluminum, with some aftermarket ones mades out of stainless steel. The last thing you'd want is these valves to melt quickly in a fire, sending all the heat, smoke and flame into the tunnel and cabin of the aircraft. Aluminum valves just don't make sense, in my opinion.
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0.010" thick Stainless Steel Sheet
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Marking out the cut
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Ready for cutting.
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