| day |
notes |
hours |
| 1 |
Door lock instructions received from Karen, but they give no clue about the absence of the circlip or how the barrel is to be retained in the cylinder, they focus on where and how to install the lock in the door. |
|
| 3 |
At LAA Rally, collect oil, antifreeze and oil drain washers from SkyDrive and cowl baffles from Neville Eyre. Also buy a reduced-price coolant temperature gauge from LAS Aerospace. |
|
| 6 |
Roll out fuselage onto drive. Put oil and antifreeze into trailer and bring out lower cowl. Put oil drain washers into box in trailer with oil filters etc. Fit lower cowl to fuselage; can only get upper 3 screws in on each side as screws are too short for the lower holes. Try to fit port baffle but I can't wiggle it into place - looks like the baffles have to be fitted before the cowl. Remove cowl and slide port baffle into place - it goes fully in to touch the inlet manifold, unlike the starboard one which will need relieving at the inboard aft corner to clear the engine mount and the starter motor. Offer up cowl and there seems enough space, but the forward end of the baffle is too low to mate with the lip of the cowl, even when the baffle is lifted to just under the ignition leads. The baffle will need to be unbent a bit, and possibly trimmed at the forward outboard corner. Put cowl back in trailer and roll fuselage back into garage. |
2660.4 |
| 8 |
Offer up starboard forward baffle piece and check where it needs to be relieved to clear engine mount and starter motor. Take a little off at a time with the hand nibbler, testing fit after each cut. After quite a few iterations, it no longer touches the mount or the starter when located against the inlet manifold with the cut-out positioned centrally above the cylinders. Try the location of the starboard aft baffle piece. It will need trimming to clear the engine mount. Try out the oil tank in position to check how the semi-circular cutouts in the baffle line up with that fore-and-aft. Difficult to hold everything in place but it does look as though the oil tank hole will be in about the right place for the tank when the baffle pieces are joined together. Check fit of port forward baffle and find it touches the area around one of the gearbox fixing screws. Trim it slightly - don't want to take off too much as it will probably be further clear once it is un-bent to meet the cowl lip. |
2661.6 |
| 14 |
Roll out fuselage onto drive. Get lower cowl out of trailer. Get the longer SS CSK screws for cowl fixing out of box 20 (had forgotten about them last time I fitted the lower cowl). Check where oil tank should be located. The cylindrical surface will be abut 5mm forward of the starboard firewall face. Offer up starboard aft baffle piece to oil tank and it seems to line up reasonably well with the tank, when the angled parts of the forward & aft baffles are aligned with each other. Mark lines on top of footwell, parallel to forward face, to help with alignment. Mark inboard edge of aft baffle where it touches the Rotax engine mount and needs to be relieved. Clamp the baffle securely to the bench drill table and cut a semi-circle with a 40mm holesaw. Try it for fit and it seems OK, although it will need relieving a little more to keep it clear of the mount. Clamp both sections of the baffle together with a cleco clamp at the inboard edge to check how oil tank might fit. Seems to go in OK and looks as though it is intended to sit with the rim completely above the baffle, although the pictures I have show it much lower. Will need to check how the oil pipes run before making any irrevocable decisions about the tank location. Take oil tank out of the way and again clamp baffle parts together. Offer up lower cowl. Tricky to get into place below the prop driver and above the baffle flange. That will not be a problem once the central hole in the cowl is opened up to final size, but for the moment will leave the hole sized for locating on the propshaft. Forward flange of baffle is about 40mm below the cowl lip when the baffle is as high as it will go without fouling the spark plug leads. The sloping part of the baffle also seems very close to the adjacent exhaust port - will need to fit the exhaust downpipe at least temporarily to check clearance there before final drilling for attachment of baffle to cowl. Dismantle it all. Clamp the baffle in the bender and open the upper forward bend a little bit by hand. Remove from bender, re-assemble baffles & offer up cowl. Better, but still needs a little more straightening of the bend. Dismantle, return to bender and straighten a little more by hand, with a piece of aluminium angle to help keep it true along the length. Re-assemble and although the angle is now OK, the lower forward bend is too far forward. Mark where the bend should be against the edge of the cowl lip and dismantle. Clamp in bender and straighten lower bend as much as possible by hand. Turning over and re-clamping helps to straighten further; a tiny squeeze in the opposite direction finally gets it straight. Re-position in clamp and bend at the new mark, to an angle parallel to the main part of the baffle. Re-assemble (have now found it's easy to position the cowl by tilting port side down to clear prop driver) and the position and angle of the bend look good. Baffle is touching cowl towards the forward end. Take it all off and start to file a relief but it's going quite slowly so switch to hand nibbler and snips. Re-assemble and now the baffle is touching the cowl most of the way along the main flat section and near the lower forward bend. Take apart and trim a sliver off all along with nibbler. Trim around bend with nibbler and snips. Re-assemble and mark tight spots. Take apart and rub down the marked areas with the millennicut file, holding the baffle in the vise. Re-assemble and it looks better now with no obvious tight spots. Will probably need to be trimmed more, to allow for thickness of seals and accommodate engine vibration etc.
Lay the strips Neville provided for extending the bottom duct alongside the CD2 & CD3 parts but there is no obvious match-up between them - will need to ask Neville.
Draw lines on top of port footwell as for starboard to aid alignment of aft baffle piece. Offer up port forward baffle to engine and then port aft baffle to see where it will need relieving to clear engine mount. Mark the location of the cutout. As it's on the bend, will not be able to use the holesaw as before so make triangular cutout with nibbler and bring it to semi-circular shape with half-round file. Check fit. Clamp baffles together with a cleco at the inboard end of the overlap. Try cowl in place. The forward flange is only about 25mm below the cowl lip on this side so should need less straightening of the bend. Getting late so stop there. Put cowl back in trailer and roll fuselage back into garage. |
2665.4 |
| 15 |
Send photo of CD2, CD3 & Neville's additional strips to Neville asking how they fit. |
|
| 16 |
Boil some water in a small saucepan to test temperature senders. At room temperature, the Aircraft Spruce one I picked up at the LAA Rally measures 775 ohms. It's marked 02017-00, 05-09 and has 1/8" NPT thread. The VDO one from SkyDrive is marked 801/10/1, max 150C & 1.15, measures 850 ohms and has M10 x 1.5mm thread. The one with the KET gauge from eBay has no markings, measures 52.6k ohms and has 1/8" NPT thread. The Aircraft Spruce meter when connected to its own sender immersed in the boiling water has the needle in line with the angled stroke of the digit 4 in the 240 F marking. With the SkyDrive sender, the needle is aligned with the angled stroke of the digit 2 in the 240 F marking. With the KET sender, the needle does not move off the bottom peg, which is not surprising as the resistance measurement shows it's a completely different type. The KET gauge with its own sender shows quite a slowly increasing reading which stabilises at 106 C. Using the MGL E3 instrument with the SkyDrive sender on its orange lead again shows a slow response but it stabilises at 100 C, occasionally changing to 99 C or 101 C. With the Aircraft Spruce sender it is slow to register and stabilises at 108 C.
The conclusion is that the senders are not interchangeable between gauges. The KET gauge is not accurate, and the Aircraft Spruce one does not provide good enough resolution. To measure the coolant temperature from the SkyDrive tee-piece on the coolant hose the SkyDrive sensor will need to be connected to the MGL E3. That means one of the CHT senders will have to be left unused, as the E3 only caters for 2 VDO NTC senders. It will be necessary to find out empirically which of the CHT senders shows the higher temperature and use that one. Either the connectors will need to be swapped behind the panel or a switch will need to be fitted somewhere - not much room left for one though! |
|
| 17 |
Start to make up a model of the aft central baffle shape in corrugated cardboard. After cutting out the first piece realise it will foul the carb air filters so unpack and fit them temporarily. The sides of the baffle need to be tapered at the forward end to clear them - more at starboard than port because of the angled thrustline. There is just room for a 25mm fixing flange on the composite firewall underneath the earthing block, and that still leaves room for the stainless steel firewall to butt against the composite firewall underneath the baffle. Continue making up the model using separate pieces of cardboard joined with duct tape. The sides can be extended forward underneath the air filters. The starboard flange for fixing to the top of the footwell won't be able to go under the overflow bottle so has to be shorter. The port and starboard aft baffles will need to be trimmed to fit around the aft baffle fixing flanges - I don't want to be bothered making joggles for a neat fit where they would overlap. Unfold the developed shape and lay it on the flat sheet supplied by Neville. It would just about fit when positioned squarely, but partly because of the odd shape of Neville's piece there is much more room when it is angled. |
2669.1 |
| 18 |
Neville replies asking me to compare the CD2/CD3 pieces and his extension strips with the paper template he sent to me. |
|
| 19 |
Let Neville know we will be away for a couple of days and I will compare the metalwork and template and contact him when we get back. |
|
| 22 |
Photograph the CD3 part and one of Neville's extension strips together on Neville's paper template and send pictures to him. Neville replies telling me to chuck out the extension strips and he will make complete new parts for me. He would like to have a copy of the template I have made for the top-hat baffle piece to fit between the footwells. |
|
| 23 |
Send Neville some pictures of my card template for the baffle between the footwells, asking if he thinks it looks OK before I start to cut metal, and promising to make a copy of the template for him. |
|
go to list of milestones
go to previous page of journal 
go to list of narrative pages
