May 6, 2006

Another big day at the hangar today. I spent most of it doing the baffle seals. They’re still not quite finished either.

I traced the edges to some poster board, and then went from there. The two side bits are different because I was experimenting with what worked best. It turned out to be the one in the middle.

These are the baffle fasteners I got from Spruce. They’re aluminium, so are light, and also a bit on the soft side, so you have to be gentle with your big fat screw driver.

Here, I’ve punched the holes in the baffle seal to see how the fasteners fit. Looking good. There’s a bit too much slop in it all though, so I decided to make a retainer strip too to help take up some slack.

Here’s the retainer strip on the right side. It’s just 0.032" stock, so didn’t add too much. It looks a whole lot nicer too.

Here’s a bit of a look from the outside. So instead of looking nice on only one side like you get with rivets, it looks nice on both! I can even replace the seal if I ever have the urge.

Getting there… I can’t believe how long all this is taking me! I feel like I’ve got a thousand hours in these baffles!

The tool of choice for punching the holes into the baffle seal material. A drill just doesn’t do the job. All the scribbles on the templates were to get my stupid pen working again. At seems that there’s a layer of talc on the baffles and the talc gets on the pen tip and stops it working after drawing about 5 inches of line! It was driving me nuts!

Here they are, nearly done. Only bit left to do is the front wall behind the ring gear. I’ve decided I’ll paint these later. I’m going to get it all working nice first.

I got fed up with baffles, so I moved on to securing some of the wiring. There’s a lot of stuff going on in here with all these sensors and FADEC stuff, and it all needs to be secure enough so it lasts. We don’t want any of this stuff chaffing through.

This bit is the EGT and CHT and manifold temp sensors harness for cylinders 2 and 4. It’s a shame that these engines get painted fully assembled, as the paint is just getting wrecked on the bolts I have to remove here and there for Adel clamps. This little sucker was a toughie. That cover plate you see there is where one would normally expect to find one of those antique thingy’s…. What’s it called again? Ah yes, that’s right… A magneto!

Well, I thought the previous one was hard. This one was an absolute nightmare. I hate these Adel clamp things. This one, I had to reshape a few times and have several tries at getting it on. Eventually, it succumbed though, and then I beat on it with a piece of wood and a mallet to shape it away from the oil pressure fitting. I’ve got sore fingers now!

This is the harness that goes to EGT, CHT and manifold temp sensors for cylinders 1 and 3.

More FADEC harness stuff. I had a lot of fun trying to route this harness to make the lengths work. In some areas, I still have too much length, but I’ll manage. It could’ve been worse, it could’ve been too short. In some places it was too short, but I got creative with routing and resolved those issues.

I made the cable for the starter motor. Big fat welding cable. This still needs securing. I need a big batch of Adel clamps!

T’other end of starter motor cable. Looks like a loose terminal floating around in there too. Better get that out. I’m sure it’ll fall out eventually if I were to forget.

Well, that’s it for today/yesterday! Got a fair bit done. I’m pushing hard to get to the point where I can fire this thing up. Tomorrow, I’m going to make a new throttle cable bracket.