Firewall Forward VIII
4/16/2006 8 Hours
Here's the patch I made to go over the big hole I made in the air intake snorkel to clear the alternator bracket. It's stuck down here, but I need to sand off the lip and reinforce it some.
It clears the alternator nicely now. I've sanded the lip, and reinforcement will come as the week progresses. Ultimately, this part needs to be sanded and painted so it looks half decent. I know you won't see it, but I will know.... I need to spot face the flange somehow too. That's going to be a little trickier. If anyone has any ideas/tricks, let me know.
My other task today was to get the left baffle floor done. This was how far I got. I made the reinforcement plate for the filter face, and cut the hole for the filter in the baffle floor. This was a bit nerve wracking, because it has to look good, and I don't really want to have to buy another baffle floor if this goes awry. I need to find some room for the angle that holds the baffle side wall too.
Here you can see the slight twist that I have built into the floor. This is so it matches the cowl opening nicely. So far, it's working out OK, if a bit slowly.
4/18/2006 1 Hour
Tonight, I stopped by the hangar briefly to lay up some fibreglass on the patch for the intake snorkel. It didn't really take me too long, and it turned out really nice. The hardest part was having the patience to pass all the pieces of cloth through the small opening for the throttle body! The patch was inaccessible from the big wide air filter end. I didn't want to put lay ups on the outside really, as it looked neat as it was, and I wanted to make some nice blend fillets on the inside.
4/19/2006 2.5 Hours
Dodged out of work early today, which was nice because it's 74 degrees F here right now. Almost summery! I need to start pushing harder to get some of this stuff done.
I started looking at the interface between the left baffle floor and the baffle side wall. This is a tricky area. I want it to look really neat when someone looks into the cowl intakes, so I decided that putting the angle on the outside would work out best. Especially with the air filter arrangement I have. It was difficult to fit the screws in place with the angle on the inside too, so this helped push me in that direction some.
I made some good progress towards getting this whole area done. I'll order the screws for the holding the filter tonight too. They might get here in time for the weekend, but I doubt it.
I didn't have my camera, so I'll take pics tomorrow and post them here.
4/23/2006 9 Hours
Well, I did have my camera today, and we took a slew of pics, but for some reason my card was unreadable when I put it into my computer. It just said it was corrupt. Now I don't know what to do with it. Lot's of good photos too. So... Once again, no pictures with this update, which is going to make it a bit difficult to explain everything. It also makes it difficult for me to remember everything we did. - Update 4/24/2006 Recovered images from corrupt flash card. Now posted here!
I started on the right baffle floor today. I basically had to re do it since the other one was too short. It's good in other respects too, because now I get to undo some of what I'd already done and wasn't happy with. First I had to work out where the bends needed to be and how much to bend them. I ended up bending the floor down a fair bit more along the engine edge then I put a diagonal bend in it to raise one end to match the cowl inlet. I also turned down a lip along the front edge to add some rigidity. It now fit's really well.
Clayton came by today and helped out. We got a heck of a lot done really. I'm really annoyed that my memory card has taken a dump on me.
We continued on with a new right front baffle wall. I decided to make it similar to the left floor with the angle that attaches it to the floor on the outside, giving a nice clean look when people peer into the cowl inlets at Oshkosh or Sun N Fun! I'll get there eventually! Because of the way I bent the floor this time, the angle worked out quite nicely. We got the whole left front baffle piece completed. I still need to trim it for the intake ramps, but I need to trim the cowl inlets and put the ramps on before I go trimming the baffles for them.
Here I'm back riveting the reinforcement in.
Here it is on the plane. Looking good! Finally making some good progress on these baffles.
Back to the snorkel side of things. We made the alternate air door, and got everything ready to epoxy. We cut the hole in the snorkel for the door, and Clayton set about it with a file and made it big enough to accept the flange. Today was the day we'd assemble this thing for good. Clayton mixed up a batch of resin and cotton flox, and we we're good to go. This new snorkel design actually has a big enough flat area for the alternate air door, so no building up of the snorkel is necessary behind the alt air door flange like the old snorkels. We roughed up the angle pieces that attach at the air filter end and put some epoxy mix on them and riveted in place with aluminium backing strips to prevent the rivets from pulling through.
Once it was all rivetted together Clayton painted some more mix on to everything to help secure it all. The snorkel is almost finished! The only task left is to drill out the holes for the mounting screws (arriving next week) and put on the nut plates. It's starting to come together. We set the snorkel aside to set up. It's gonna be a day or so.
Clayton had a go at the 'bleb' I made with some sandpaper to remove all the sharpies from the inside. Here's a shot of the final result. This is looking into the throttle body hole.
On to tidying up loose ends that we hadn't got done previously on other baffle parts. The right rear baffle needed the heater inlet flange attaching to it. We decided where it should go, then Clayton cut the big hole. He's getting the hang of this metalwork thing! I trimmed the inlet flange to fit the area it needed to go, and drilled and countersunk the holes.
Clayton had a good idea to drop it through the hole, which made it look a whole lot less like a last minute add on. He also had a good idea about the filter screen I wanted to rivet in there. He suggested that I make it removable with the hose, so it's easy to clean it out or replace it one day. If it's riveted in there permanently, it could be a pain to replace/clean if it gets clogged with stuff (bugs, bird feathers, leaves, stray cats and the like). The same baffle part also needed the reinforcement for the mounting hole on the rear face, so we did that at the same time as the heater flange.
I need to order up some spark plug cable grommets. I'm wondering where I can get those from. I'll look in the Spruce catalogue tonight.
During the week, I can continue on with the left floor. The snorkel will have set up, and the screws will be here to assemble it. Then I can figure out the bracketry that holds the inside edge of the floor to the engine case.
Oh well, I've probably forgot a ton of stuff. Clayton will remind me if I have. Thanks for your help today Clayton! We got a lot done!
4/24/2006 1.5 Hours
Another evening at the hangar! I couldn't stay too long tonight as I had to play soccer this evening and needed to eat something a couple of hours before playing.
I set about the left baffle floor with the rivet squeezer. I got most of it riveted together, although I didn't put the side wall on it yet. These rivets might be easier to squeeze once the side wall is trimmed to the inlet ramps.
The snorkel set up nicely. Tomorrow I'll be able to assemble the snorkel and left floor and then I can make the front bracket that attaches the floor to the engine case.
After footy tonight, I started trying to find a way to recover the images from the flash card I used over the weekend. Hopefully, I'll find something that works out. Right now, I've tried about four different programs without much luck. They recovered plenty of deleted files. I want to recover the files that aren't deleted!
Success! I found one called PC Inspector. It's working a treat. Seems like it's recovering all the files quite well. I might even be able to populate these pages with some images!
This evening, I assembled the snorkel and left baffle floor so that I could make the bracket. Yesterday, the screws arrived for it, which was convenient. Here, I have already made the bracket and drilled it to the floor. This whole area is really, really stiff now!
Here you can see the way the snorkel and floor sandwich the filter. I will be making spacers for the screws so that they have a positive stop to tighten against. The nuts are also just temporary so I could get the bracket to the engine case positioned correctly.
The bracket. Van's say to bend this bracket, but my thoughts were that using an angle would be a whole lot easier. Seems a lot of other builders do the same thing here too. All the washers are so I don't have to screw the screw too far in. How lazy am I?!
On to the front walls. These look like they might be a lot of fun - NOT! I uses a piece of 2"x4" to space the wall from the ring gear. Seems to position the baffle walls about right, and keeps them square to something. Some trimming required. You can see the gap I'll have in the lower corner near the inlet. I'll have to find a way to close this out, then I'll probably use some filler in there to tidy it up a bit before getting these painted or powder coated. This was about as far as I got tonight before my lovely wife called me to come get her from work.
I added some other pics and comments in some of the past date entries, as last night's data recovery session had some further success. Today I formatted the flash card and everything is fine again. I've no idea what caused it to go bad.