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Fuel & Oil Hose Replacement Report

jrich

Active Member
We recently replaced every fuel and oil hose with Aircraft Specialty, LLC?s Teflon lined hoses. Included was their Thermostasis unit and fittings kit offer. Steve at Aircraft Specialty, LLC was very helpful and delivered excellent/superior customer support and effort. He was proactive in heading off any possible pitfalls in preparation and planning for the hoses. For example, since each RV-12 may have some variation in position of fuel and oil pressure transducers, the lengths and any adapter fittings of the associated hoses are important, even critical. He questioned me to make sure that would order the correct lengths and fittings. Note that the Thermostasis kit as advertised on the Aircraft Specialty, LLC website does not include hoses to the oil pressure transducer and the hose from the bottom of the engine to the oil reservoir. I added those hoses with my measurements to the order so that all oil hoses would be ?lifetime? hoses as well as all of the fuel hoses.
I opted to essentially lay the Thermostasis unit and hoses on top of the fuel hoses. It was time consuming giving separation between hoses, hose to airframe, engine, and engine appurtenance using zip ties and RTV. A lot of time and effort by trial and error was taken keeping the hoses from contacting the top cowling. However, in the end, we were satisfied at how the installation turned out.
We had no leaks except for the fuel ?in? port on the brand new, Rotax supplied fuel pump. The leak appeared to be caused by a slight groove on the sealing face of the ?in? port of the fuel pump. This was remedied by polishing both the sealing face of the ?in? port of the fuel pump and the consequential ridge affected to the copper washer by using progressively finer sand paper and then a polishing compound.
Now, with the Thermostasis unit, we no longer have any wasted time waiting only for warming of the engine because by the time we do most of the pre-take off check list and taxi to the run-up area, the engine is at or above 120 deg. F. So far, the Thermostasis unit appears to keep the oil temp. around 190 deg. F, as designed, most of the time.
 
We recently replaced every fuel and oil hose with Aircraft Specialty, LLC’s Teflon lined hoses. Included was their Thermostasis unit and fittings kit offer. Steve at Aircraft Specialty, LLC was very helpful and delivered excellent/superior customer support and effort. He was proactive in heading off any possible pitfalls in preparation and planning for the hoses. For example, since each RV-12 may have some variation in position of fuel and oil pressure transducers, the lengths and any adapter fittings of the associated hoses are important, even critical. He questioned me to make sure that would order the correct lengths and fittings. Note that the Thermostasis kit as advertised on the Aircraft Specialty, LLC website does not include hoses to the oil pressure transducer and the hose from the bottom of the engine to the oil reservoir. I added those hoses with my measurements to the order so that all oil hoses would be “lifetime” hoses as well as all of the fuel hoses.
I opted to essentially lay the Thermostasis unit and hoses on top of the fuel hoses. It was time consuming giving separation between hoses, hose to airframe, engine, and engine appurtenance using zip ties and RTV. A lot of time and effort by trial and error was taken keeping the hoses from contacting the top cowling. However, in the end, we were satisfied at how the installation turned out.
We had no leaks except for the fuel “in” port on the brand new, Rotax supplied fuel pump. The leak appeared to be caused by a slight groove on the sealing face of the “in” port of the fuel pump. This was remedied by polishing both the sealing face of the “in” port of the fuel pump and the consequential ridge affected to the copper washer by using progressively finer sand paper and then a polishing compound.
Now, with the Thermostasis unit, we no longer have any wasted time waiting only for warming of the engine because by the time we do most of the pre-take off check list and taxi to the run-up area, the engine is at or above 120 deg. F. So far, the Thermostasis unit appears to keep the oil temp. around 190 deg. F, as designed, most of the time.

I'm glad that you like your kits.

Just wanted to point out for those that are looking at any of these items.... they are designed to fit around the stock RV-12. However, if you have modified your aircraft and require any adjustments, we are happy to modify the hoses to custom lengths for you. Just contact us prior to ordering and let us know what you need.

We separate the RV-12 firewall forward lines into three separate component packages.

1. Fuel lines
2. Oil Thermostasis Installation
3. Remote oil sender (either metric or NPT installation)

As was pointed out, the Oil Thermostasis installation reuses one of the stock lines. The line being reused is Teflon and is not on a 5 year replacement schedule. If someone does want to replace that 5th hose also, the cost of that hose is an additional $145. It is not available for online ordering on our website yet, but we do have the dimensions for it.

If anyone has any questions, please feel free to contact us.

Steve
 
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I just installed the custom fuel hose and hydraulic line assemblies offered by Aircraft Specialty LLC for my RV14. Awesome company and great customer service! I am now going to use them for my firewall fwd kit.
 
Absolutely one of the best vendors out there. Looking forward to building my Rans Outbound and seeing what they come up with on that baby.
 
Dave,

Tell us more about your S-21 project.:)

TD or trike?
Rotax or Titan?
Avionics?
.

TD, Barrett Precision IO360, Dynon. That?s about all I can tell. I haven?t received any of it yet. Rans has several of them flying now, but there is still a lot of development going on. I have flown the Rotax Outbound and Titan powered Raven and they were awesome machines. Reminded me of the feeling I had when I first flew the RV6 many years ago. Mitch and the boys need to get busy on that high wing !;)
 
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