CFItom said:
I can’t seem to find a website for this unit!
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I have one and use it 24-7. In Michigan the humidity requires dry air in the engine in my opinion. After shut down I hook the system up and you can see visual moisture in the clear tube coming from the dipstick. I just pop the inlet to the silica out of the container for about 15 min then put it back in when I am ready to head home. The owner of http://www.rbaviation.com/ is a really nice guy.
 
wirejock said:
Yes. Nice someone keeps track. Yes. I have a roller. I don't see how a dryer could harm my roller tappet engine though.
Someone asked how to build one. No specific person addressed. I answered. I will recuse myself.
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I didn’t know that basically all Lycoming engines new or factory overhauled since 2007 are delivered with roller cams. It’s game changing. It goes from sliding friction to rolling friction which is an improvement of a factor or ten, maybe a hundred. A analogy is tire wear rolling vs skidding. There may be good reasons to dehydrate your crankcase but roller cam/lifter spalling probably isn’t one of them.
 
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Mikeyb said:
I didn’t know that basically all Lycoming engines new or factory overhauled since 2007 are delivered with roller cams. It’s game changing. It goes from sliding friction to rolling friction which is an improvement of a factor or ten, maybe a hundred. A analogy is tire wear rolling vs skidding. There may be good reasons to dehydrate your crankcase but roller cam/lifter spalling probably isn’t one of them.
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Roller tappets stop the usual wear related spalling issues, but a roller cam can go rusty just as easy as a slipper cam. And they do go rusty, too.

Internal corrosion isn’t also just a matter of the cam and tappets, those parts are cheap. At overhaul, corrosion on the rods or crank can cost you many thousands of ((insert currency here)).
 
While I'm on board with having a dehydrator on my engine someday, I did see commentary one time (don't remember the source), that dehydrating the internal moist engine air only condenses the nasty, corrosion-causing acids and chemicals onto surfaces and could accelerate corrosion. The post-flight internal engine air environment must be open-loop purged (quickly) first before a close-looped dehydrator is installed. (??)

🍿
 
rockwoodrv9 said:

I have one and use it 24-7. In Michigan the humidity requires dry air in the engine in my opinion. After shut down I hook the system up and you can see visual moisture in the clear tube coming from the dipstick. I just pop the inlet to the silica out of the container for about 15 min then put it back in when I am ready to head home. The owner of http://www.rbaviation.com/ is a really nice guy.
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Thank you!
 
ve0kog said:
i went with beer keg air filter (claims 0.5 micron). https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07149NMRM
Still on the original filter after 1.5 years at lowest airflow.

there is a very fine dust in the dehydrator every time i swap beads, not sure of the source.
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It's from the silica. Others have reported this and mention that it goes along with higher silica mentioned in oil analysis reports. Mine have always been normal, but I have put an inline beer keg filter in the output line because they're cheap, easy, and don't appreciably impair dried air flow.
 
ve0kog said:
i went with beer keg air filter (claims 0.5 micron). https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07149NMRM
Still on the original filter after 1.5 years at lowest airflow.

there is a very fine dust in the dehydrator every time i swap beads, not sure of the source.
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I used aquarium pump filters on the air going into the silica and out of it. They are some kind of sintered quartz. Not sure the pore size, but work well with an aquarium pump.
 
MED said:
I used aquarium pump filters on the air going into the silica and out of it. They are some kind of sintered quartz. Not sure the pore size, but work well with an aquarium pump.
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I looked at the aquarium filters. The pore size is typically 50 to 250 µm. That’s far from being enough to trap silica dust particles. The beer filters that they advertise on Amazon are typically 0.5 µm. They’re super cheap and are a simple in-line plug-in.

Blackstone reports on silica in my oil and my levels have always been low. But I elected to use the beer filters anyway after some post that I read here on VAF. I do use an aquarium filter/diffuser at the bottom of my silica gel to help diffuse the airflow through a broader surface area of the silica, not as a filter.
 
MacCool said:
I looked at the aquarium filters. The pore size is typically 50 to 250 µm. That’s far from being enough to trap silica dust particles. The beer filters that they advertise on Amazon are typically 0.5 µm. They’re super cheap and are a simple in-line plug-in.

Blackstone reports on silica in my oil and my levels have always been low. But I elected to use the beer filters anyway after some post that I read here on VAF. I do use an aquarium filter/diffuser at the bottom of my silica gel to help diffuse the airflow through a broader surface area of the silica, not as a filter.
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Good info. I have not seen significant silica, but I will look into beer filters.
 
MacCool said:
I looked at the aquarium filters. The pore size is typically 50 to 250 µm. That’s far from being enough to trap silica dust particles. The beer filters that they advertise on Amazon are typically 0.5 µm. They’re super cheap and are a simple in-line plug-in.

Blackstone reports on silica in my oil and my levels have always been low. But I elected to use the beer filters anyway after some post that I read here on VAF. I do use an aquarium filter/diffuser at the bottom of my silica gel to help diffuse the airflow through a broader surface area of the silica, not as a filter.
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I was planning on using these. They don’t say the micron size unfortunately. No good?
 
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