Rotorway Helicopter Engine Cooling Problems
The 145 and 152 Rotorway owners experienced a high temperature problem temperatures of water and oil 190 to 215 degrees. It is too close to disaster for a gasoline engine and robs you of a lot of power.
Rotorway has come up with a new modified reverse cooling system which I understand works quite well but somewhat pricey. Most of us have avoided it because of the price, so I set out to look for another solution.
One of the other reasons are the engine compartment builds a tremendous amount of heat and cannot escape. I’m sure that you and I build our ships to cosmetically look great and refuse to cut large enough venting holes in our cowlings. It really helps to cut them a little larger – you’ll be surprised!
My ship is a turbo charged 145 dual ignition and it creates more heat because of the water cooled turbo. I had a severe problem, oil 230 degrees, water at 220. I tried a lot of things; speeding up the fan to opening up more cold air vents, some help but not enough.
I finally, after a lot of research and investigating, found a fan, variable pitched, 12 blade, air foil styled blades that were composite and an aluminum hub made in England. The firm remanufactured the fan to fit my hub and trim to fit the radiator shroud.
The result now is water temperature is stable at 180, oil at 170, and in 20 minutes hover practice, water temperature did come up to 190 and oil 180. These temperatures are with a 165 degree thermostat installed. The blades were set at 30 degree pitch.
They still have 5 degrees more adjustment which I don’t think I will ever need. According to the manufacturer, this is considered a very efficient high temperature cooling fan. Similar fans can be found on the internet with a bit of searching.
Do you know the name of the British company that made the fan?
Hi Dominique,
This is an old article. You can try tracking down Eric Cymbaliuk? I’m not even sure if he is still alive, it has been so long. You can try tracking him through: http://www.rotorwayownersgroup.com/forums_c/forumdisplay.php?s=&f=70&page=1&pp=50&sort=dateline&order=asc&daysprune=-1 or https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/rec.aviation.rotorcraft/ucoZ5KPVOWs