Engine compartment

Build hours: 198

Jake, the shop rat, caught in the flash!

Anyhow, we riveted the top angle to bulkhead "A". Riveted the engine supports together and to the lower angle on "A" but did not rivet the lower angle to "A". We're planning to align, drill and rivet the engine skins before riveting the lower angle and supports to "A" so that blind rivets are not needed below the engine mount at the "A" bulkhead. This also means we have to order the nuts and bolts that become inaccessible after closure. Two additional changes are also being considered, see below. Installed the engine nutplates and mounted a plywood engine pattern to hold the mount square while fitting the skins.

Change 1 - Make the filler plates in two pieces. One piece rivets to the skin, the other rivets to the vertical engine support then the two pieces are riveted together when adding the engine ring.

Follow up: Decided to stick with the plan filler pieces and use blind rivets as needed.

Change 2 - Speaking of the engine ring... After looking at various examples of the engine ring implementation, we decided to purchase a real metal shrinker(Porto-Metal, I believe) and shrink the flange around the top of the ring. We needed the shrinker for the ribs anyhow to avoid fluting so why not!

Follow up: Fluting and hand skrinking aluminum in the T6 state is only practical for large radii and the metal shrinker must be used sparingly to avoid marking the material to much!