The heat muff provided by Van’s has the inlet and the outlet on the same side of the heat muff. For my installation this would not work. I tried every conceivable location for the heat muff. Without building a new custom muff, the only location that would work was coming off the #1 exhaust. This was fortunate for the air inlet, but not great for the outlet back to the firewall.

I cut the muff in two, and used another band of aluminum to tie the two halves back together, but with the inlet and outlet rotated appropriately for my geometry.

I also filled the heat muff with stainless steel wool. This should slow the air velocity down and also improve heat transfer surface area. The end result should be hotter more effective winter time heat in the cockpit.

I’m not going to lie. Working of the baffles in general was one of the parts of the build that i liked the least. Its iterative, boring, tedious, and sort of finicky. The number of times the cowl goes on and off and on and off is… well a lot. You have to slowly get everything to the right shape. Make sure there are not any puckers, and that the seal will be good. Optimal sealing ensures efficient cooling, and can even reduce cooling drag on the airplane. So its doubly important. Doesn’t mean i enjoy it.

That said, I’m pretty happy with the end result. There is still some work to do, that I’m going to fine tune once its flying and the rubber takes shape a bit better.

A lot of work getting all of the oil and sensor lines routed with adel clamps. When you see a completed RV, the routing of everything seems so natural. But it takes a lot of jockeying and playing to find out what routing gives the least interference, and best access to everything etc.

Here is my termination of the oil cooler butterfly shutter control cable. I’m very happy with the actuator.

Fuel line and starter line on the left side going forward.

I installed the baffle shrouds with safety wire and PVC protectors. I reinforced the ends with washers and RTV per many suggestions on the forums. Some folks convert this to use threaded rod, but the reports I saw seem to say those break too. We’ll see how this does and adjust fire if need be. It is the recommended method by Vans.

For the oil pressure and manifold pressure lines, I needed a good way to hold those lines secure as they crossed from the left to the right. I added this bit of angle above the EI Coil to hold the adel clamps for theses lines.