Hot C85-12 Baffling Felt Question

[3Dreaming]

Just Google Continental breather mod.

[Bruce Caldwell]

Hey Hank, where can I find that breather mod?

[Hank Jarrett]

When I bought my 41 it had several blast tubes (one on each mag and a couple I couldn't figure out what they were supposed to be pointed at). I removed all the "random" ones and got a significant decrease in oil temps. There were also several "loose" areas i closed up when I put the felt in. You don't want ANY of the cooling air to go around the edges of the cowl. I also made new metal pieces for between the cylinders that hugged closer to the case and fins, forcing the air to go THROUGH the fins and not around them. There was a lot of leakage from the chin opening because the duct behind it didn't fit that well. New aluminum there closed up the leaks from that. The pan under the engine was also "snugged up" to seal better. My engine always ran nice and cool until the felt popped back instead of forward and the Silicone baffle seal fixed that. I even went in and put rivets in all the little drill holes in the baffles. They probably added up to an inch hole in total.

One other thing I did while cleaning up the cowl was to put the oil breather elbow mod on and run the breather line up and over the RH side cylinders, through the back baffle and down to the normal exit point
on the center of the lower cowl exhaust. GREAT MOD!!! My oil consumption dropped considerably and I now have NO oil on the belly....NONE! It was worth the trouble just to eliminate my having to crawl under the plane to clean the belly!

[Edwin Otha]

The early Aeroncas had leather baffles and with the addition of the C85 they controlled the high oil temps with a blast tube to the rear area.

[Scott]

More info and suggestions here:

https://c-fclr.blogspot.com/p/taylorcraft-closed-cowling.html

[TC747paul]

Blue Silicone it is, at least it will match the lower color of the plane...

[astjp2]

Who wants to buy the machine to install staples? It’s the size of a Volkswagen van! They are still around, I passed in 2 of them just because I don’t have room. They convert a coil of wire to a staple and it punches through the felt and aluminum and folds the staple in about 2 steps of the machine. Fast for production but not an end user way to do things. Tim

[Hank Jarrett]

Got to agree with Rob. I had felt seals on my 41 and wanted to keep them because they were "original". I put new felt in and even hand bent the staples since as he said, there is no tool to do it any more. Got a bad surprise about 18 month ago when in the pattern I had a soft "pop" sound and the oil temp started to rise, pretty quickly actually. No idea what it was but the temp was closing fast on the red line from early on the down wind to touch down and we shut down on roll out and rolled off the side of the runway. No damage we could find except the felt seal on top had blown back and was tilted AFT instead of forward. It was AMAZING how fast the temps went up with all that air going over the engine and down behind it instead of through the cylinders! I pulled all that nice felt off and replaced it with that awful looking blue silicon cowl seal. It fit MUCH tighter against the cowl and no further problems. Originality is great, and if you really know how to put the felt on I would bet it would work fine, but the silicon was easy to put in and seemed almost fool proof. I like originality, but not enough to cook an engine.

[Robert Lees]

All the original A-65 engined Taylorcraft I have known have used felt baffle cowl seals...perhaps not the best idea, but maybe original. I have no reason to think that original C-85 engined aircraft would be vastly different, unless these engines were later installed under an STC.

Of course, through wear-and-tear (and decades of abuse and neglect and fatigue and oil impregnation and everything else) these felt seals fail. A give-away for original felt baffle sealing is the iron staples used to attach the felt to the aluminium baffles...no-one has the tooling to do that these days.

Better to replace with new, or use an alternative baffle seal material, if approved in your country of use.

Hope that helps,
Rob

[Ragwing nut]

Some of the early planes used leather for the baffles. Might try a blast tube on the temp bulb housing to move a little more air behind the diaphragm area..
EO

thats a cessna bandaid and is false sense of security

[Ragwing nut]

if oil is hot I would look at your lower baffling that feeds air to the oil tank

[Edwin Otha]

Some of the early planes used leather for the baffles. Might try a blast tube on the temp bulb housing to move a little more air behind the diaphragm area..
EO

[astjp2]

oil temp or cht hot?

oil

[TC747paul]

Thanks for info,
oil is hot, i don't have a way to check cht on this plane
We trimmed the Black rubber type baffling and relief slit the couple remaining ones, Oil temp was 190F at 65F ambient so 125F above ambient.
Tuesday Before trimming i was reading 200F @ 60F so 140F above ambient. I still have a ways to go but it is clear that the baffling trim lower the Oil Temp 15F or so. i still have light coming thru but very much less, i will try to glue together the tops and report back

It is a Deluxe short mount 85-12F with starter and luscombe exhaust, cowling sheet metal is marginal. i did install the bottom baffle under the case which seamed to get 5F or so.

I have always wondered if the cast deluxe grill messes up the airflow enough to be noticeable.

thanks again

[Ragwing nut]

oil temp or cht hot?