Firewall Forward
N929JA gets an ENGINE!
It's an 0-320 D1A wide deck off of an RV-4 ( 688.7 Total Time Since New ) 160 horse with a hollow crank that sported a Hartzell prop with only 10 hours of use in the log.
In its new home on a cart built to put it in the proper horizontal orientation.
While my prop was very low time, I purchased it from a salvage dealer so I decided to get a full overhaul to ensure that it was good to go for my first flight. Jordon Prop in San Antonio was nice enough to do this for me for a big pile of dead presidents.
Next on to the "Engine Mounting..."
Step 1:
Engine mount, I won't bore you with the details but it was a no brainer. After the mount comes finding and drilling all the control cable holes ( follow the plans and ye shall not fail ), and mounting the cable bracket for the prop governor. Easy stuff.
Step 2:
For those of you with "preowned" engines that are relatively low time now would be a good time to remove any standing oil, old silicone seal and corrosion.
Next a fresh coat of paint to protect any exposed metal, pin, and mount. This was my 4th engine mounting so I didn't even shoot pictures. I decided to buy new engine mounts as the old ones were showing some wear. About the best advice I can give you is to start with the top mounts, use a drift pin to line up the holes. Just push the top bolts into place and then move on to the bottom. Once you have all the bolts in place start attaching the nuts and tighten them all down in a rotational pattern, top left, top right, bottom right, bottom left a little at a time. Once you have them all snuged down you can back them off one at a time and start adding washers to get the nuts in the right place for pinning. See.... EASY!
Engine gets a new coat of paint... Love that Lycoming gray engine enamel. I'm sporting some powder coated valve covers I procured off of eBay one late night. Don't they look spiffy! I also put new rubber on the intakes and polished up the tubes.
Shown with the Lightspeed coils attached.
I did the same trick as with my last Lightspeed coil mounting by fabing out a second bracket to support the other coil on the other side of the case. If you purchase this fine EI you will see that your one bracket short of a good mounting solution... easily fixed.
Next on to the cowl!
I decided this go around to put cam loc fasteners on the firewall. I just got tired of burning my hand whenever I wanted to remove the cowl after a flight to change the oil on my 8. First step here is the drill some 0.063 strips right to the firewall and counter sink to fit.
I then notched them out to reduce the weight leaving the required amount of material behind.
Now to make a silk purse out of a 6 cowl...
Best to dry fit it on the bench to make sure that it will actually even fit together. My cowl was the runt of the litter. Nothing fit. Not the front, sides, or anything even after serious sanding ( note the extension on my dremel tool - $20 at Home Depot - a must for this fiberglass trimming ).
So... I decided to make some wholesale cuts and removed the front inner
ears from the top of the cowl all together so that "something" would
line up. 
Once I did this I could put the two halves together and drill some cleco holes where surfaces were actually aligned!!!! ( well close anyway )
I will glass the ears back on after I have the hinges all riveted in place and know I have a good fit. Also note that I put the spinner on the top of the ring where the prop will sit and found the best over all center. I then traced a line around the circumference which I will use later to ensure that I have centered the front of the cowl on the back plate of the mounted prop before drilling my mounting reference holes.
As this is my second time around the barn with this part of a Van's kit I can tell you that the most important thing is that you securely mount the top of the cowl in such a way that it can not move and you can always get it back to that original orientation when you remove it to cut and fit. The top of the cowl is the reference for the entire cowl. Screw this up and you will have one heck of a time getting the fit right. I decided to use two wooden blocks of the right thickness to ensure that my spinner would not bump into the cowl. I went ahead and used two of the holes in the back plate ( if you don't have a CS prop you will not have these holes so you might want to drill them anyway ). All you need is two #30 holes for some #6 screws. Once the top cowl is positioned in the right spot drill the holes right into the front of the cowl. You can fill them in later with flox. Then put two #6 screws in the holes all the way into the cowl. Then draw a center line on the back of the cowl and line that up with the center line on your fuse. Now you have two reference points that aren't going anywhere.
Getting a perfectly flat edge on that raggedy cowl with a 4 inch sanding block can be a chore so I got out the old 3M spray glue and improved the sanding block design a bit
.
Next I applied this to the top cowl to get a sweet looking edge.
Next, just follow Van's instructions. Tape on fuse, mark back 2", trim back of cowl, blah blah blah. I love the taste of fiberglass dust in the morning...
Ok, now you have it all clecoed on and it fits like a glove.
Now it's time to drill the long hinges... I did this on the bench. Remember to let the hinge ride up at the aft end. This does make a great deal of difference when installing the top 5000 or so times that you will be doing so on your finished bird.
After the top hinges were clecoed on, I put both halves together ( again on the bench ) secured with clamps, put the pin in and drilled away.
Ok, so now for the preachy part... rule 1; hinge eye's crack and break over time. rule 2; there IS something you can do to prevent rule 1 from happening. You need to get rid of the "preload stress". You know that stress you get when you try to get your 40" stomach into a pair of 38" pants. You will end up stretching, and pulling, and jamming of hinges pins, and bending of clecos, etc, etc, to get the right fit ( on the cowl, not the pants ). This puts your attach points under a lot of static stress even before you start that big vibraty thing up front that slings that big 40 pound weight around.
So... what do you do! ( glad you ask )
First prep your hinges by drilling some #19 holes in between all your rivet holes so that the goop your about to apply will have something to grab on to.
Next mix up a batch of proseal and round up a freezer zip lock bag. Snip about on eighth inch off the corner and peel back the bag so that you have easy access to the corner from the inside of the bag. Dump the lump of proseal in the bag, all of it. Now use it like a cake decorating bag to squeeze a line of proseal down the inside of the cowl where one of the hinges will mount. Cleco this hinge in place and move on to the next hinge. Then mount the cowl to the fuse and insert all hinge pins and clecos for alignment.
Let set for two days to ensure that it's good and dry and "now" rivet the hinge on.
I'm going to wait on the camlock mounting as I still have a lot to do under the cowl and I don't want to wear out the camlocks before I get a chance to fly.
On to the baffles!
Van's baffle kits have come a long way since I manufactured my 8. Now first fit is a snap. I avoid the instructions for this part of the kit as I have done this before and understand how it all fits together. So right out of the box I attach the rear right most baffle without making a cut.
Word on the street is that if you put a washer between the baffle and the #4 cylinder at the cylinder attach point for this panel that your cooling will be much more balanced ( historically getting the #3 and #4 cylinders to be close to the same CHT has been an issue for most builders. So I bite and slide in the washer before I fit my first right side panel.
Remember to make that little shim shown in the plans or you will have one heck of a time getting these two panels to mate up.
