Firewall Forward III
10/28/2005 Update
Today, the exhaust showed up from Aircraft Exhaust Technologies Inc., and what a work of art! It looks great. Here are some pics.
A general overhead shot. I just loosely assembled it for now.
Here you can see the tailpipe. I had it angle cut for that fast look.
Here, you can see the angle a little better maybe. The collector is quite lovely! Once I'm ready, this will be polished to a high lustre.
10/30/2005 7 hours
I was actually at the hangar a bit longer than this today, but Cameron was here, and my friend Colin came by so we spent a whole lot of time hangar flying. Anyway, first task was to put the alternator on. I guess this could be an electrical thing, but it's firewall forward too. It was pretty easy really. I haven't put it in yet permanently, because I want to check clearances to the cowling when I get to that stage. Then, I'll tighten everything down and safety it.
I have a bit of hard contact between the alternator and the prop governor line. My line is flexible for some reason. I've seen others with a rigid pipe. I'm going to have to work this one out somehow. I also ran the wiring to the alternator. I need to order up a couple of ANL current limiters too, to go on the firewall for the leads from both alternators. I don't know why I didn't just do this ages ago.
Next, I put the exhaust on to see how it looked. I'm really not so sure I like it. My main concern is that it sticks out and down way too far. Ideally, the collector should be a little further forward of the firewall, and the angle should be closer to the belly of the plane. Here are some shots. See what you think...
I decided to wheel it outside for a different perspective. The distance between the belly and the lowest point of the tailpipe is 7". I might call Aircraft Exhaust up and see if there's anything that can be done about this. I don't know, maybe in a level flight attitude, it won't look as bad?
I'm expecting my prop in the next few days too, so I'll be taking some time off work to pick it up and put it on the plane. It'd be nice if it was tomorrow, but probably more likely to be Tuesday. We'll see.
10/31/2005 Update
This evening, I spoke with Kirk at Aircraft Exhaust. He checked out my pictures on this site, and saw my issues. From the discussion we had, he seemed to think that what I wanted was do-able, so I tasked him with finding out how much. He came back a little later and said that they would take care of it. Amazing service or what? So far, they've been one of the best suppliers I've dealt with on this project. It sounds like we can get the exhaust close to what I'm looking for, by pulling the collector inside the cowl more and tweaking the angle. With the Superior sump, there's enough room there to be able to execute this plan. I'll be packing up the exhaust tomorrow, and shipping it out to them, along with some more pictures and close ups. Thanks guys, it's much appreciated!
Today the prop arrived! I didn't make it to the hangar in time to meet the delivery, but luckily for me, Cameron was there to let the truck in to the hangars. I got there eventually though, and started unwrapping everything! Here it is, inthe box. It was a giant triangular box! It was very well packed.
The spinner was in it's own separate box. Here I put the spinner on so you can get an idea of what we're gonna look like! Oooooooooo.....
Once this was all done, I wanted to set about finishing up the firewall stuff. I ordered some ANL current limiters from B & C the other day, and I have now got them. I'll take some pics and post them soon. I was too caught up in the propeller today to take pics of the other stuff! I made a doubler plate for the current limiters, and got Cameron to help me rivet it on the firewall. This was quite tricky with the engine mount in the way, but we managed it in the end.
Pic of current limiter doubler here.....
Then we figured out the governor. I had to find the right dtuds for it first off. Unfortunately, I'd used them for thr throttle body! Doh! They were hell to get out too, but I got 'em eventually. Worse still, they wouldn't thread into the prop governor adapter hardly before they got too tight to turn. I ended up chasing the threads with a 5?16"-18 die. Once I'd done that, they went in much better.
This was all we had time for tonight, as I had to go out to a wine tasting dinner with Lucy. I left the engine hanging from the cherry picker (propped up with a 2x4) for the night. Hopefully, tomorrow I'll be allowed to go to the hangar to do some more! I wanna get the engine on for good, and the prop on to see how it looks!
Today was a big firewall forward day. I continued finishing up everything I needed to do in order to get the engine on for the last time. First task was put the correct bolts in the FADEC ECU's (see the FADEC pages for this) and general double check everything I had so far. I torqued all the bolts to spec on the engine mount to the firewall. and installed the cotter pins.
Steve came by, so I had him help me hang the engine. I'm getting better at doing it myself, but this was the first time I'd done it with the governor on there, so I figured a helping hand wouldn't go a miss. I didn't take a picture of the engine hanging there on it's own, as there are plenty in past pages! Well, let me tell you how much fun it is getting the cotter pins in the engine mount bolts! The trick we used to get the last lower bolts in was to leave the first lower bolt a little loose, and lift the engine some with the hoist. That should make a slight gap between the mount and the engine which is enough to gain some wiggle room to get the pesky little critter in.
Well, there's not a lot of room to get the cotter pins in. The top two bolts were the hardest ones, despite what logic might otherwise tell you. Trust me, if you're doing this, you'll find out soon enough!
Once the engien was hung, it was er... Time for one more thing. Hmmm.... What to do next? How about a nice propeller?! Now this prop is LIGHT! I could lift it on my own with ease. I'm not sure exactly how much it weighs, but it wasn't much. That's what we thought at first anyway! Me and steve had it resting on our shoulders while we fiddled with the bolts. Man these are painstaking to tighten up! Because the bolts are captive between flanges, you have to work each bolt a bit at a time, all the while supporting the propeller. They're easy to get bound up too, because you only have to over do it with one of them, and all the others get harder. It's obvious why the design is like this though. It's a matter of safety. It's physically impossible for these bolts to come loose all at the same time. Even though that's the case, they still get safety wired. Before I do that though, I need to figure out torquing them up properly.
Here's a close up of the prop flange.
Now the rest of the story.... Me and Steve had to do all this twice. Reason being that the first time we did it, we had the damn thing clocked wrong and it wouldn't bolt up tight. Hmmmm. Turns out that one hole on the prop is smaller than all the others. When we had a quick glance, they all looked the same to me, so we just went right ahead and started mounting it. So, we had to back all the bolts out bit by bit, and then index the prop around by one bolt hole. That's all it took, one bolt hole, and all that extra work was the result. Our shoulders were aching! Remember how light I said this prop was? I take it all back.
Here's a few shots of the prop on the plane. I think you will agree, it looks bloody awesome!
Here, we tried the cowl on for size. The cowl is going to be a lot of work.
