The International Cessna 170 Association

This is not necessarily 170 related but I thought it was interesting. I ran across this the other day. When I first read it, I initially recoiled at the thought of putting a foreign object into the fuel system. Has anyone ever heard of this type of thing?

http://www.sonexaircraft.com/eshop/cart ... ory_id=336

This foam has been around many years ,we fitted to our helicopter fleet and fixed wing fleet when I was in the armed services. It does take up some capacity of the fuel tank but is it worth it????. It's not the easy job of fitting also. If I had larger tanks on my 170 ,I could consider it as it stops sloshing around ,but I need every drop of fuel so it won't be going in .
However it's makes water draining a big pain also as the water doesn't freely flow to the drain points .

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QbG8m-SjmVs

If you expect you may run into AAA HEI rounds, I highly recommend it.

It's been fitted to C-130 aircraft since the late '60s and works well.

Most race car fuel cells use this foam, as do a lot of planes. The theory behind it is kind of interesting. A certain volume of vapor is necessary to support combustion. The open cells of the foam simply divide the large volume of the fuel tank into a million tiny volumes, each of which is below that size threshold, thereby reducing the chance of combustion.

DEM