Cool Heads Prevail

Founded in 1971, Baldwin City, Kansas-based McFarlane Aviation is a diversified manufacturing company specializing in the production of affordable, high-quality FAA-PMA (Parts Manufacture Approval) components. McFarlane’s catalog comprises parts for general aviation, commercial, experimental, homebuilt, and Light-Sport Aircraft (LSA) models.

McFarlane subsidiary Airforms has introduced a new series of FAA-PMA engine baffles for all Cessna-172 B and C OEM configurations. Designed as replacements for aging factory installations, Airforms’s new baffles have undergone individual PMA approval and may be purchased as standalone units or as complete sets. The product’s reinforced design ensures extended durability and reduces metal fatigue failures. What’s more, Airforms’s baffle assemblies are offered in both a bare metal and a corrosion-resistant powder-coated finish. Baffles are available with high-temp silicone seals or with McFarlane’s proprietary and premium cowl saver.

Airforms is a leading producer of FAA-PMA approved engine baffles for a wide range of aircraft types, including numerous iterations of Cessna’s storied and ubiquitous 172 model. By dint of an expert staff and a dedicated Wasilla, Alaska manufacturing facility known as the Airforms Center for Engine Baffle Excellence, the company ensures its baffles are of excellent and consistent quality.

Baffles are essential to the business of routing cooling air around aero-engines—such as the Lycoming IO-360-L2A powerplant common to Cessna’s 172 aircraft family. Broadly speaking, air-cooled general aviation engines are cooled primarily by a process known as pressure cooling—the rudiments of which constitute surrounding the engine with a cowling and utilizing a system of baffles to seal and direct ram-air around the powerplant. The described architecture occasions high-pressure (relative to ambient atmospheric pressure) which forces air to flow between the heat-radiating fins typical of the cylinder-assemblies of air-cooled engines. Many higher-performance aircraft designs make use of cowl-flaps which, when opened by the pilot, reduce air-pressure below the engine, thereby inducing greater air-flow (high-pressure to low-pressure) through such.

McFarlane Aviation is a provider of high-quality parts and accessories for general aviation aircraft. All McFarlane products are meticulously engineered and characterized by exceptional quality and extended lifespan. McFarlane’s family of subsidiary brands includes: CJ Aviation, Flight-Resource/MT Props, and Airforms.

FMI: www.mcfarlaneaviation.com