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RV-8A Rotary Engine Installation

S

singoldsby

Member
Hello everyone my name is Scott Ingoldsby and I am new to the Vans forum. I held off joining until my project was a little further along as it is now...:) I am in the final stages of completing my RV8A with a rotary engine setup (power sport RE-215 to be exact) I know there are a lot of people who will think Im crazy but please no engine bashing as I own a Piper Saratoga with a 350hp LYCO and have no issues. I am attaching my wings today and will be ground test ready hopefully by Thanksgiving.
Any advice or input on this setup would be greatly appreciated. I have done several small mods which I believe will help my cooling under the cowl. I will be following up with some pics in the near future, but for now looking for advice from ANYONE with ROTARY EXPERIENCE! I am proud of where my project is today and hope to fly to OSH in 2016. Hopefully I can be of future assistance to anyone who decides to go this route in their craft..
PS anyone with a full page link to the RVator arcticle (The tiger and the spitfire come to Oregon) please send it to me....

Thank You
N300UM
Reserved N231EZ (My late uncle Walters Mooney tail Number who I greatly thank for my 1st ride at 8)
 
Welcome!

My business partner was the second person to fly behind a rotary (missed being first by two weeks), he does not post here but if you contact me off list, I'll put you in touch with him.

From what he described, cooling was his biggest issue. He spent a lot of time solving this and did a great job. I have flown with him and his -6A is a good performer.

He is also fond of saying, "If you like to tinker, put an auto conversion in. If you like to fly, put a Lycoming in."

Best of luck and keep us updated!
 
Hi Scott,

Welcome! There are several of us here that are either building or flying rotaries. Mine's a Renesis with RWS redrive & controller in an RV-7. I'd love to hear more about your Powersport installation.

Are you on the Flyrotary email list? We'd love to have you participate over there.

Charlie
 
Rotary cooling

Guys, thanks for the non negatives and positive response. I'm located in the St louis area about 80 miles south east. I've heard cooling is an issue. I am a 20 plus year veteran of fiberglass and is my current business specialty. I am slightly modifying my James cowl with ducts to generate Xtra concentrated air flow to radiator. I will also be sending headers to be ceramic coated.
 
Here's a few links to just a few pics I will be posting more as I progress towards ground ops...
20151113_180051.jpg

20150723_104108.jpg

20151024_123721.jpg
 
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Haven't seen a Powersport gearbox on a new plane for close to 10 years now. Any idea how many more might be out there?
 
singoldsby said:
Here you go. Just a couple as I will post more as I progress towards ground ops. .

http://postimg.org/gallery/2i6lo35h6/
Click to expand...

Appears to be a pressure plenum cooling system, like a Lycoming, but with the high pressure air forced through the heat exchanger rather than down through cylinder fins. If so, you'll need to seal the baffle wall around those exhaust tailpipes, as well as under the engine block and all around the perimeter of the wall. Simply blowing air at the heat exchanger with a duct won't do any good.

If I recall correctly, rotary exhaust headers run very hot, so perhaps re-routing the fuel supply and return lines would be a good idea. The pump outlets are vertical, and you already have them coupled up high, above the pumps, so why not run forward to the fuel rail directly from that point, rather than swoop down and then elbow back up? It would fix another problem too; that cantilevered hard line (the one with the supply-side Floscan and the red check valve) is maybe not such a good idea.

The long, flexible return line is less critical, but distance from the headers will improve its lifespan, if nothing else.

General comment; throw away all that corrugated wiring conduit and bind the wiring into harnesses, neatly routed and properly fixated to something solid with Adels. And see that ground wire terminating on the heat exchanger shroud below the fuel pumps? It's not fixated to anything, but rather just hanging from the crimp in the Amp terminal. Fixating it would be a good example of how to add reliability to wiring. Ground wires are the Rodney Dangerfield of electrical systems...they get no respect.
 
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Dan, thanks for the advice. I am working on rerouting some of the lines. I am as i said a fiberglass guy so I am going to wrap the wire looms with a secondary fiberglass shielding. Kind of a Chinese finger lock type material.. As far as the cooling there were a couple of RV 8s setup up similar to mine and had good results with the James cowling. Ceramic coating of the headers inside and out should help keep the heat contained a bit.
I also am in the process of making an aluminum baffle to go behind the exhaust and direct air out the bottom. Please keep the tips coming as i will consider all input. I will post more pics later
 
rv6ejguy said:
Haven't seen a Powersport gearbox on a new plane for close to 10 years now. Any idea how many more might be out there?
Click to expand...

Ross, not sure how many are out there but would love to know myself... The good thing is I have an in house machine shop with cnc capabilities so I can recreate any part if needed should I have trouble. They appear to be a well thought out and quality unit..
 
Since you're looking at fuel routing... There are a couple of different 'philosophies' over on Flyrotary about what works best. The 'other' school of thought (proven safe on a flying rotary powered RV-8) is to keep the pumps and the pressure regulator on the cool side of the firewall. Logic is that a high pressure leak would be detected quicker, and shut down quicker, if it happens in the cockpit. And, less chance of spraying gas on the hot exhaust. Additional advantage is that with the bypass regulator in the cockpit, only fuel that gets consumed is heated by the engine compartment. This actually minimizes risk of fuel vaporization, with all FWF fuel at ~40 psi. And, the fuel flow sensor can be placed *after* the regulator, removing the need for return flow metering.

On the subject of cooling air flow, Dan is obviously correct about needing to seal up everything in the engine compartment to force all the air through the rad. Unfortunately, it will likely be pretty hard to manage that; worse than with a Lyc. That's why most successful installations use a properly shaped 'diffuser' (duct) to feed the rad & oil cooler. Not saying your setup won't work, but it's likely to be higher drag than a proper inlet duct.

FWIW,

Charlie
 
Just thought I would put a pic of my cowl on here so everyone is aware of my intake set up. This of course is before any cowl mods. I intend to add vents and duct work if needed.
 
This is setup up similar to the rv8 Jim Clark flew to Vans back door. I believe he had good success with this design. If anyone knows of any issues please let me know
 
singoldsby said:
Just thought I would put a pic of my cowl on here so everyone is aware of my intake set up. This of course is before any cowl mods. I intend to add vents and duct work if needed.
Click to expand...

Yep, those are attractive cowls.

Can you describe, or even better, sketch what you have in mind for cooling mass flow?
 
The cowl and rad setup is the same as the other two Powersport RV8s used way back when. They never said anything about cooling issues. Huge rad, not so efficient but certainly looks great from the outside and hopefully works as well as the other ones.
 
I currently fly a 7A with a Renesis, RD1C redrive, with a EC2 controller. I tried your current cooling installation but with enough differences in my installation that I cannot give a positive or negative reply, but I had to change to a different cooling installation due to high oil temps.
I do agree with the other comments about your current fuel pump location. I did suffer a situation with vapor lock and had to redesign my fuel system.
It did take some time to work out the bugs but I thoroughly enjoy the aircraft now and even flew it to Oshkosh this year.
PM me if you would like to know more about my install, I'll help where I can.
library
 
shodges said:
I currently fly a 7A with a Renesis, RD1C redrive, with a EC2 controller. I tried your current cooling installation but with enough differences in my installation that I cannot give a positive or negative reply, but I had to change to a different cooling installation due to high oil temps.
I do agree with the other comments about your current fuel pump location. I did suffer a situation with vapor lock and had to redesign my fuel system.
It did take some time to work out the bugs but I thoroughly enjoy the aircraft now and even flew it to Oshkosh this year.
PM me if you would like to know more about my install, I'll help where I can.
library
Click to expand...

Clean looking install and airframe. Nice!
 
Very nice Sam, thanks for the input and i sent you a pm. Looking forward to maybe lining up with you on the flight line at Oshkosh one day...
 
rv6ejguy said:
The cowl and rad setup is the same as the other two Powersport RV8s used way back when. They never said anything about cooling issues. Huge rad, not so efficient but certainly looks great from the outside and hopefully works as well as the other ones.
Click to expand...

Ahh, but that's the thing...I have no idea what the other two Powersport RV8's looked like under the cowl. As for "never said anything about cooling", well, that's a little like sex and bank accounts...sometimes folks don't tell all ;)

I'm guessing the Powersports have a cooling flow like the top sketch, and Sam's revised system is like the bottom sketch?

 
Ross at Simple Digital Systems has RV6 with Turbo Subaru, and have done extensive air flow testing and built under fuselage mounted radiator (similar to P51)..He has constructed very nice fiberglass inlet and outlet ducts ,and as a result I am in process of duplicating his approximate dimensions out of aluminum for cooling my RV 4 with Subaru 2.5 .I am very poor at fiberglass, but may get better as I finish my cowl....Tom
 
DanH said:
Ahh, but that's the thing...I have no idea what the other two Powersport RV8's looked like under the cowl. As for "never said anything about cooling", well, that's a little like sex and bank accounts...sometimes folks don't tell all ;)

I'm guessing the Powersports have a cooling flow like the top sketch, and Sam's revised system is like the bottom sketch?

Click to expand...

I saw photos of the Powersport installations before their site vanished. One of the Powersport RV8s flew off at Van's against a Lyco powered one and outperformed it slightly if I recall at the expense of more fuel burned during the flyoffs. I'd love to re-read the RVator article as it's been a while and I don't recall all the details.

True, it was hard to find a lot of info about them outside of the RVator article and Powersport's website. The PS RV8 completed the flyoff so it must have cooled ok at least. With such large rad volumes, inlet area and not many other places for the air to go (assuming minimal clearance air and leaks), it might work similarly to Belted Air's similar setup for their V6 Chevy, both are in the same power class roughly. A bit draggy but effective.

I have read where many Rotary guys have had oiling cooling issues and spent more time solving those than water cooling ones.

Love the looks of these cowlings on RVs. :)

You Rotary guys have any performance numbers you're willing to share?
 
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Rotary RV

singoldsby said:
Here you go. Just a couple as I will post more as I progress towards ground ops. .

http://postimg.org/gallery/2i6lo35h6/
Click to expand...

Neat installation! I look forward to seeing more photos in the future! On my 13B installation (RV-9A), I have a large water radiator I'm using, which should have excess BTU's to shed; so I am also installing a water / oil intercooler. Oil cooling has generally been the big issue with rotaries; so I am plumbing the hot oil coming from the engine and running it right into the water/oil intercooler to drop the temps a bit; and then will run it through the stock Mazda air/oil cooler, prior to running it back into the engine. I'm hoping my first flight won't have any oil cooling issues...

Doug

RV-9A / 13B FWF
 
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rv6ejguy said:
You Rotary guys have any performance numbers you're willing to share?
Click to expand...
Sam will have some numbers to share no doubt... :)

Tracy Crook has a three rotor RV-8, and I think he once said he was seeing something like 3,700 fpm initial climb rate, and he has to watch his power at cruise to avoid exceeding VNE. I don't have access to my home computer where all my rotary data is kept; so maybe Charlie England can provide some of the hard numbers that Tracy has reported over the years with his "4" and "8"...

Doug

RV-9A / 13B FWF
 
Powersport

I'm from Fl and about 25 years ago I went to Oregon and took my first RV ride with a nice guy named Greg Robell in a Rv4 he built at Independence Airpark we also went by and meet a guy named Orin Hatch who was building the prototype power sport and the next day we flew to breakfast and I sat at table with Van and got to see a few more Rv's great experience and now that I've built my RV I will have to give these guys so of the credit.
Bob
 
I received some recent cruise numbers from a a guy whose not interested in playing here. Since it's not for the plane that's the subject of this thread, should I start a new thread, or just post them here?

Charlie
 
To Post or not To Post here

Charlie:

Things are pretty slow on the list, so how about just starting a new thread?

CYA

Doug
 
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