Modifications

The good news about the care and feeding of your intercooler itself is that not much is needed. Pared down to the basics, an intercooler is an air-to-air heat exchanger. According to Wayne Thomas of Pacific Oil Cooler Services, Inc.-one of the biggest repair stations that specializes in repair and overhaul of oil coolers and intercoolers-an intercooler doesnt see the internal pressures oil coolers do and, accordingly, don’t usually wear out. He said that ordinarily intercoolers easily last to engine TBO, at which point they should be pulled, inspected and repaired as necessary.

The idea of stuffing more air into an engine to increase its power output is anything but new. Mechanically driven superchargers have been compressing ambient air and feeding it to engines since at least 1885, with their exhaust gas-driven offspring, turbosuperchargers (often shortened to turbocharger or turbo), since 1905. The first turbos were installed in combat airplanes in World War I to increase their performance at altitude.

We are looking at having some military aircraft painted by a company out here in California. They have all the Mil Specs for the color we selected, however, I started receiving phone calls from the various paint manufacturers wanting us to select their brand of paint. As a military aviator, I never thought about who supplied the paint on the aircraft I fly, as long as it looked good and wasnt peeling and fading. Can Aviation Consumer provide me with some counsel on the pros and cons inherent in the different paint manufacturers, including PPG, Sherwin-Williams and Dupont? Do you guys have a preference?

When proposals for a custom paint job on my second-generation Cirrus came in as high as $25,000-with up to 10 weeks of down time-I considered stepping up to a newer model. But my investment in numerous upgrades and my comfort with the aircraft in a variety of missions and weather convinced me to keep my ham and stop looking for rye bread.Still, logic dictated that it was time to personalize and customize the paint work. Why? Because it didnt need it. N233WZ has always been pampered inside and out and is stored in a heated hangar. However, it was born in a time where Cirrus ho-hum graphics make it look like every other G2 on the ramp.I looked at aftermarket graphics, and while I wanted an aggressive design with custom colors, I never found what I was conceptualizing. That is until I saw some cutting-edge graphics and paint work on the Generation 5 Cirrus models. This clearly seemed like a radical change in appearances from the earlier models. Once I got pointed in the right direction, I decided to pull the trigger on an owner-assisted vinyl graphics project. Here is a firsthand account.

Amid all of the buzz surrounding the announcement of L-3 Aviations low-cost NGT-1000 ADS-B solution, Ive been talking with avionics shops to see just how realistic its estimated $3000 installed price will be. You can read all about the entire L-3 Lynx ADS-B product line-which has plenty of options at multiple price points-on page 11 of this issue. But based on my discussions with experienced installers, L-3s entry-level NGT-1000 ADS-B Out system isn’t exactly the cure-all for mass, mandate compliance, and that has as much to do with the real costs of installation as it does tightening competition. Good shops consider this, and so should you. An ADS-B project can be the perfect setup for sizable cost overruns and buyer remorse.

Piper Cubs are known for a lot of things, but good brakes arent among them, at least if were talking OEM equipment. Our pre-war Cub had the original expander tube brakes that, although rebuilt and we’ll maintained, worked sporadically we’ll at best.

Using its experience building patented motorcycle racing brakes, wheels and forks, French manufacturer Beringer Aero brings modern braking technology to small aircraft with a new line of bolt-on brake components and wheels. Said to be the lightest brakes and wheels available for small aircraft, Beringers components are now used by several OEMs, including Cirrus, Diamond and Pilatus, in addition to a long list of LSA and experimental kit manufacturers. The product line is unique because it includes an anti-skid feature, plus wheels that accommodate tubeless tire installations. We took a close look at Beringers line of brakes and wheels for LSA applications at this years U.S. Sport Aviation Expo, and also sampled its larger braking system in a new Cirrus. We think the technology represents the next generation of aircraft brakes.

Youve owned a Cessna 182 for several years and youve got it set up just the way you want-except you want it on floats. Can it be done for a reasonable cost or is it better to sell and buy a seaplane you like?

Last fall in a press release that few noticed, Continental Motors announced that a big flight school in Spain was converting 16 Skyhawks from Lycoming O-320s to Continentals CD-135 diesel engines. It escaped much notice because diesel conversions are thought to be a European thing unlikely to gain much traction in the U.S.A Miami-based company called Africair wants to challenge that assumption by buying up recent-model Cessna 172s and transplanting them with Continental CD-135 or…

With a stall speed of 31 knots, climb rate of more than 1500 FPM and no handling vices, the King Katmai is at home in the bush or on the pavement.

Discretionary spending is one of the first casualties of tougher times, so we expected a drop in responses to our latest survey on interior shops. When you need a new engine, you pony up. But the airplane still flies with threadbare seats and cracked vinyl. You can tough it out. But this mineshaft canary survey surprised us. In 2008, we got 209 responses—not an overwhelming number, but enough to see some trends and make some solid recommendations. This time we got 132 responses. That’s a 37-percent drop, which is much more significant than we’ve seen on other surveys past to present. We also noticed a sharp rise in the number of do-it-yourself jobs. In 2008, six percent of the respondents bought kits from Airtex or reported some other DIY interior. This time, 10 percent had bought Airtex interiors, and that number climbs to 16 percent if you lump together those using Airtex kits with several folks who removed parts, brought them to a local auto upholstery shop and then reinstalled them.

One of the unfortunate side effects of slow aircraft sales has been an erosion in the maintenance base. Many smaller shops have disappeared and some of those that remain are either losing the ability to do some kinds of work or are just declining to accept it.One maintenance procedure on the chopping block has been the resealing or repair of wet wing fuel tanks, especially in Mooneys, but in a few other models as well. At best, repairing weeping wet-wing tanks is a dark art, at worst, it’s something some owners say they have to have done several times to stop the leaks, if even the leaks can be stopped.