EFI induction/airbox

[svyolo]

I am building my cowling, and fitting the Van's FAB to my EFI throttle body. The SDS EFI throttle body is only half the length of a carb/fuel servo. I mounted the FAB slightly rear from centered, and modded the front of the box to tilt upward. Only a small part of the airbox is proud of the bottom of the bottom cowl, and only by 1/2 inch. I made a small bubble from FG to clear the airbox.

I am planning on feeding it from the right intake, but if I don't do that I will do it Battson/RCaldwell style with a tube in the front of the nose bowl. There is plenty of room. The stock Van's alternate air door is fitted to the bottom of the airbox.

This might have been quite a bit less work than using Van's scoop and fitting it to the lower cowl. It was pretty quick and easy to do.

Pics to follow in a day or two.

[Nev]

Could you post a few photos ? Sounds like you've got a good system.

[Battson]

Sounds like a neat system, with plenty of room - which is always nice.

A couple of random thoughts about air intakes in case it helps:

The air consumption by a (I)O-540 engine at full power is considerable. I wonder if it could have a noticeable effect when competing with cooling air, and the age-old Bearhawk cooling saga which some people used to complain about (been a while now). I know lots of aircraft are designed to work that way - engine takes air above cylinders etc - they usually have a smaller engine, higher design airspeed, or larger cowling intake area (in most cases - there are probably exceptions). Any effects would be most pronounced at slower speeds with higher power settings, e.g. STOL ops, mountain flying, etc. That may be a consideration for you, or not. Just thinking out loud.

If you are installing -540, from memory we calculated you want around 10 sq.in of intake area to ensure there's no restriction, around 3 or 3.5" duct from memory. Note that assumes a very short duct - it's length should be only a few times the diameter of the duct at most. For longer ducts, increase the size or accept some losses. For a -360 it would be around 6.5 sq.in. Naturally the filter needs to be much larger.

[svyolo]

I am planning on a 3" intake. I will try to get away with using the right cowl intake for the engine induction. I know several versions of Van's use it. If it is steeling too much air I can always redo the nosebowl similar to yours or RCaldwell. I think it makes it easier to R&I the lower cowl if it is connected to the engine baffling. Also less chance of ram air from outside getting into the lower cowl and reducing the delta P with the upper cowl.

[svyolo]

No luck uploading photos. I will try again later.

[jaredyates]

No luck uploading photos. I will try again later.

Can you let me know if you try again after this morning and it doesn't work please?

[svyolo]

The files were too big and I wasn't born smart enough to figure out how to compress them. I downloaded a pic compression app on my phone.

[svyolo]

Here they are. I will cut off most of the front, and glass on a flange for skeet tube.

[rv8bldr]

Jared: I can't figure out if it just me or what. I can't get the full size versions of any pics to come up today. I only get the thumbnails. Could that have something to do with your changes recently?

Mark

[jaredyates]

It could. Let me create a test user and see if I can duplicate it.

[jytestuser]

Mark, it is working ok for my test user. Can you refresh the page and try again? I'll send you an email.

[svyolo]

Here is a bit more of my progress. Pretty easy to do. I made a mold out of blue foam, a belt sander made pretty quick work of it. It will connect into the lower sheetmetal of the right air intake with skeet tube. 3" intake.