Canopy and Engine

I started this building session by putting the canopy back on the plane. I wasnt really satisfied with my side skirts. I cleaned up the canopy track and got it sliding really easy.

I added the anchor blocks and drilled them out so the canopy locks down when it is all the way closed.

I went ahead and assembled my painted latch parts after I modified them to fit good.

I realized that I had drilled the bottom row of the side skirts with a #30 bit and should have been a #40. This was all the excuse I needed to rebuild them. I went back and dug out the parts that were originally supposed to be the side skirts and began the painful task of scraping the dried plastic off of them. I had used my rear skirt parts on the first set to avoid scraping this plastic off.

After building the second set of side skirts, I was thrilled because they fit perfect! It was worth the time spent doing it. I painted all the parts and prepared to rivet them on permanently.

I shifted my attention to my engine. I built an engine stand and put casters on the bottom. Very convenient as I can work on the engine a while, then push it back out of the way. The smaller piece of pipe that inserts thru the middle of the stand bolts onto the crankshaft. I copied the one ACS sells for 250 bucks except mine is built out of pipe, not angle iron. This will come in handy when I do the first overhaul as you can completely disassemble the engine one part at a time down to the crankshaft.

After removing the the old presto-lite starter, I plugged all the places where the engine might take on water. I then degreased and washed the engine thoroughly with a pressure washer. I continued roughing up the old paint and cleaning up the engine.  I removed the prop governor, fuel injector servo, spider, and injector lines. Then masked off all the mating surfaces and then painted the engine with Dupi-Color high temperature black paint

I removed the old rear facing oil sump that comes on a Lycoming IO-360 B-1E. This is the underside where the sump mounts. All the gears in the accessory case looks good. 

I painted and then mounted the Superior cold air horizontal sump as per instructions. Besides facing backwards, the previous sump had intake passages that passed thru the oil warming the air before entering the combustion chamber. I believe this was done to help with cooling the oil in the sump. The cold air sump is supposed to add a few horsepower as cool air is more dense. The sump bolts and nuts were torqued to 100 inch pounds with new star lock washers.

I installed the intake tubes from the sump to the cylinder heads with new gaskets. I cleaned up the fuel injection system and found one cracked brass nut on the #3 injector line. I will need get that line replaced. Installed new Sky-Tech 149NL high torque starter. Installed new Plane Power 60 amp alternator. Had every tool I own out so time to clean up!

Glued the canopy skirts to the canopy with Sika-Flex and riveted up the assembly.

While I was waiting on the Sika-Flex to cure, I decided that I needed to try one more time to get my Dynon Skyview to send my ACK E-04 Emergency Locator Transmitter  a fix. The ELT emits a search and rescue signal if it senses an impact. The ELT will take the GPS fix from the Dynon and transmit it also giving searchers a pin point location to search in case of an accident. After trying everything I could think of, I could not get the ELT to emit the correct led test light pulse confirming the GPS fix with the Skyview sending the signal with a baud rate of 9600. As a last ditch effort I changed the baud rate in the ELT and the Skyview to 4800 and hooked up the test led light and behold, it worked. The signal was steady. I was about to have to buy another GPS antenna and rig it up to cure the problem if this did'nt work.

I had read on the forums that it was not good to run the ELT antenna thru the bulkhead as in my first installation as a crash my distort the bulkhead and cut the antenna causing my signal to not be broadcasted.

Had to cut the connector and run the antenna cable along the side and install another connector. Tied in all down with zip ties and cable cradle mounts. All is well now so I will not have to worry about redoing this at inspection time. Last time in the tunnel I hope.

Re installed the canopy rails, anchor blocks, and sliding canopy. Drilled and riveted the side skirt brace to the canopy frame. Side skirts look great and fit perfectly to the side skins. Since I used my rear fairing to build my first set of side skirts, now I had to build my rear skirt out of fiberglass. Actually, I had planned on using fiberglass as my canopy was a little high in the middle and a little sunk in on the bottoms. There is no way to make the side skirts fit perfect and have the back skirt have the correct width. Thank goodness I didn't spend weeks trying to get this 100% perfect like some other builders I read about. I was a little nervous as this is my first try at laying up fiberglass. I used packing tape to bridge the gap between canopy and fuselage and taped off the fairing shape with electrical tape. The edge on the electrical should transpose on the bottom side of the fiberglass lay up to give me a cut line later. I waxed the area with mold release wax 5 times. 

I made a pattern from paper of each half of the lay up and cut 8 layers of 8 ounce uni directional cloth. 4 layers with the weave running horizontally and 4 vertically. Bid cloth would have been less trouble but I had ordered the uni by mistake so I had to stagger the weave laying it up. I mixed up some West System 105 resin with the slow hardener and applied it to the waxed tape or mold. I then layed up 5 layers on each side. I had been reading about this for months so it went very good. I let it cure for an hr or so and then mixed and applied some micro balloons to even out the low spots. Actually, I gobbed it on as I had read how easy it was to sand.

I let it cure over night and broke out the sanding blocks next morning. I found out it was kind of like sanding concrete! I was never gonna get this stuff in shape! As luck would have it, my son had a craftsman electric sander and I tried it and thank goodness, it did the trick. After about three hrs, I had the fairing smooth as silk and with a perfect transition all over. I was thrilled! I was so thrilled, I forgot to take any pictures of the fairing! This is the sander, I'm gonna go buy two of them!

I then sanded with 60 grit sandpaper and then cleaned up the surface with the shop vac and wiped it down with acetone. Then I layed up 3 more layers of cloth and applied peel ply tape. I know the piece is not finished yet but I'm not scared of fiberglass anymore! .......................................................................So its back to work tomorrow for another two weeks at the rig. I know each one of these steps looks like I just zipped it together but actually they represent hours and hours of reading and planning and then it takes twice as long to actually get the work done as I had planned. I'm thinking a slow build kit would have taken me 10 years to complete! But all in all, I am excited about how much I accomplished on my days off. 

 61 Hours

762 Total Hours