Engine compartment

Build hours: 230

Disassembled, deburred and reassembled both engine compartments. (The deburring fingers are now experiencing a minor numbness!) The front cowls need to be formed and the engine compartments will be ready for riveting! The next view of the engine compartment will be less prickly.

Engine compartment

Build hours: 210

Completed engine compartment on UCA to same point as UCB. Planned engine cowl and baffling arrangement since we are departing from the plans a bit in this area.

Engine compartment

Build hours: 206

The filler pieces and skins for UCB were drilled and clecoed to the engine mounts. The skins were cut to their final dimensions and the double row of rivets and rivet pattern on the A to B skin was laid out. The skins for UCA were also hung for fitting to the engine mount.

A test was made on the front engine cowl to create a more finished look and appears to be workable. A 3/16" flange was added to the node cowl behind the spinner. This will cover the top of the slots in the attached flange and also give the engine cowl an edge to butt up against instead of being an overlap.

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!

Engine compartment and tail components

Build hours: 194

While waiting for some materials and our work schedule to synchronize, 10 hours was expended in cutting out blanks for the tail parts for both UCs. (horz. stabs, horz. stab forward spars, vertical stab forward spars, rudder spars and ribs) Additionally, the horizontal and vertical engine mounts were cut and flanged to the indicated angles and the "A" firewall angles were aligned and clecoed on.

When Rick and I got back together we were able to drill and cleco the engine mounts together and hang them on the firewall. The mounts were squared by clamping a wood spreader to the front and an engine compartment skin pattern was made. The engine mounts will be leveled when the skin is attached. Finally, all holes EXCEPT the firewall holes that hold the rudder bar attachment were drilled to 1/8".

We also gave metal shrinking a try on the filler plates for the front of the engine mounts. We flanged the straight edge of the filler plate in the brake and made a particle board form with a slot to accomodate the flange to tap the curved edge around. We bent the curved edge to leave 3 puckers. A wood block was clamped to each side of a pucker and the pucker was then flattened. The filler plate came out well but this method is not practical when a tight clamp cannot be applied to both sides of the pucker.