Not much in the way of shiny content today. Mostly I’ve been working on getting those tapered cylinder extensions fitted in place and drilled for rivets. Part of what made this fun is that for the most part, there’s just no good way to clamp the extensions to the adjacent baffles, especially with everything installed on the engine – which is what I wanted, so I could ensure the extensions laid across the cylinders properly.
The one exception to this was the #1 baffle, where I was able to get a cleco clamp through the large hole for the prop governor oil line. I wasn’t so lucky with #2, but that’s still at the front of the engine, where there’s decent access, so it wasn’t so bad. #3 and #4 were quite a bit more challenging, since I had to work around the engine mount. I ended up using some creative methods involving scrap wood and popsicle sticks to sort of hold things in place while I marked one hole at a time, then drilled it on the bench, then went back to mark the second, and so on.
Here are a couple photos of the #1 and #2 extensions in place; the extensions are the little wedge-shaped pieces just barely visible near the cylinder bases I didn’t even bother trying to get similar photos of the other two, because 1) it would have been a lot tougher to frame and 2) I was more in a “just get it done and move on” mode.
With those in place, I went back to the instructions and started…following them (a rare luxury at this stage of the build). The ensuing work was just getting the two inlet ramps baffle assemblies deburred and match-drilled as needed. There were a couple pieces to get riveted together, but for the most part everything is staying clecoed for the time being.
So those ramps are back in place, and I have the lower cowl hung again right now. The next step will be tweaking and trimming the baffle pieces in this area so they’re in the right spot relative to the cowl inlets. There’s also some fun to be had up here to get things fitting nicely to the rounded corners of those inlets…stand by for fabricating some fun conical aluminum pieces…