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Hey everyone. When we bought the 205 a year ago, it came with, I believe, is a Tanis sump heater and battery heater (orange pads on both). Yesterday, for the first time, I plugged it in several hours prior to a flight. The thought being to see if it would shorten the time at the end of the runway waiting for my oil temp to come up.
Now, when the heater kicks in, the engine warms up. Fine, but at whatever time you have it set to turn off, the engine cools, and draws moist air(or at least moister air) into the engine itself. Now, the heater turns on again, and you repeat the cycle, constantly heating and cooling the engine inside out.
I think it's an old car heater from the 80s-90s, I'm more worried about this thing catching fire to be honest. Owner said that he'd put it under the cowling for about 8-10 hours before flight and get the compartment heated around 60 degrees F before starting the engine. I've been looking into the different Tanis systems as an alternative.
A generator is the only option I see to run the Tanis heater. I use a whisperlite, takes 1 - 2 hours if its cold - 12F. Im trying to get this set up working for faster preheating, but the Buddy heater is shutting off when I attach my heat recovery shroud. Haven't worked out why yet.
Pre-heating time has arrived so I'm looking at options. Tanis and Reiff have been pretty toughly covered so no need to discuss that. What I'm wondering about is forced air, basically spaces heaters, that are designed to be placed directly in the engine compartment.
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If you have power, buy an electric engine pre heater. Reiff, Tanis or EZ-Heat all work great, depending on your overnight temperatures. There is no way I would use ANY source of combustion heating if I had access to electricity. Electricity virtually eliminates the danger of fire, whereas ANY combustion heating has a significant risk of fire.
The Standard heater consists of 50 watt bands around the base of each cylinder and a 100 watt aluminum heater glued to the sump, plus the 25 watt aluminum heater glued to the oil cooler. With a cowl cover and prop and spinner covers on it, it heats the engine to a pretty consistent 80-90F, both the oil and the CHTs, even in bitter cold.
There are past threads on this topic. Electric engine heaters fall into 2 primary categories, those which heat only the oil pan and those which heat the entire engine. Reiff and Tanis make the latter. EZ Heat and others make the oil pan heaters.
The first cold morning I ran the heater at full blast for about 45 minutes. It cranked slow and I wondered if I was going to get to learn hand propping, but it fired. The 730's oil temp sensor is in the engine casing at the base of the oil cooler, it was reading 43 degrees when I flipped on the avionics master, about 2 minutes after initial ...