Not one to reinvent the wheel, I stole an idea from Chris Wallen. I saw a pic of a bracket he made for his installation and copied it to the best of my ability. So, here is a pic of his bracket followed by my version. I'll send this out to be polished.
Chris Wallen's bracket
I started roughing in the cowling tonight. I began with the bottom cowl, cut the prop shaft hole and taped it in place. I then did the same to the upper cowl and laid it in place. This is just the preliminary stages. There is a whole lot of work to be done here.
For grins, I temporarily mounted the prop and spinner. Waiting for the correct hardware to arrive.
Last night I set about making a new tray to mount the battery. I decided to mount it under the ECU that I have previously mounted. Of course, the tray I made for the ECU was too small requiring another one to be made. There is finish/detail work yet to go but it works. I'll post more pics when I get the Adele Clamp holes drilled and mounted.
And... a bit of fun. I received my GoPro strut mount from Cloud Based Engineering and decided to mount it up and see how it looks. The mount is really nice with anti mar strips where the mount contacts the leading edge of the strut and a rubber cushion around the aft with a Velcro cinch strap to secure it. It works really well to secure the mount to the strut. The mount articulates in all directions and locks securely wherever you set it. The mount itself is all aluminum. One of the main reasons I purchased this mount, I hate the regular GoPro mounting system. I wanted a regular 1/4x28 tripod camera mount and the Cloud Based Engineering mount came with it. So, to be able to mount the GoPro to this mount, I had to find a solution as GoPro doesn't offer a 1/4x28 option.
I found just what I needed in the form of a skeleton aluminum protective housing made just for the GoPro Hero 8. The housing back slides off allowing insertion of the GoPro from the back. Then you slide the back on and it is held in place with a knurled thumb screw which locks the GoPro in. One of the main reasons I purchased this was it came with 1/4x28 screw mount which I think provides a much more elegant and secure attachment. The aluminum housing provides an extra bit of protection for the GoPro. Another benefit of the housing it that it provided a standard 52mm lens attachment ring. Not only does this further protect the GoPro lens, it allows me to attach standard photographic filters. I look forward to testing this all out.
Monday, I took the Saber Manufacturing spacer and the NR prop hub to a machinist to have the center hole on the NR Prop hub opened up to match the flange on the spacer. I picked it up Tuesday afternoon and wanted to temporarily install it bit first I needed to install the lugs into the engine flange. To install the lugs I couldn't press them in as the flange was already mounted on the engine. So, I used a large impact socket, a long bolt with a thick washer, and my impact gun to pull the lugs into place. Once all six lugs were installed, I set the spacer in place to verify fit. All good.
This morning I went to install the backing plate for the spinner and realized it too would not fit. So I set about drilling out the spinner plate with my large step drill. Being much thinner metal I chose to do this myself. After some minor filing, the backing plate slid into position just fine.
Then I put the prop hub in place.
Then I test fitted the spinner. This required me to ream out all the screw holes. Once complete I set the spinner in place and hand screwed it on. Looks pretty good.
The next step was to measure for the engine flange to spacer bolts, and the spacer to prop hub bolts. I'll be ordering those tomorrow. I will also test fit the prop.
Today, I installed the lock plates on the fiberglass windshield support that gets riveted to the firewall. Pretty straight forward. I'm going to hold off on installing the fiberglass support until I determine what holes need to be drilled through the firewall and the fiberglass piece for engine stuff. I had previously painted the part, matte black on the outside and gray to match the inside. This part gets covered up once the windshield is installed with the boot cowl.
I started positioning some of the parts that will go on the engine. The first one was the oil tank. A couple of Adel Clamps at the top, looks like I'll need to figure out how to attach one at the bottom for extra support.
Next I wanted to mount the Saber Manufacturing Prop Spacer and the NR Prop Hub. I quickly realized that something was wrong when the prop hub didn't fit on the spacer correctly. So, after asking a trusted agent (Chris Wallen) what he thought, it turns out I need a little machining done on the prop hub. The NR prop hub center hole is 1.85" and the flange on the Saber Manufacturing spacer is 2.25". All the lugs line up perfectly. I dropped it off today at the machinist.
After machining it should look something like this (Photos - Chris Wallen)...
I mounted the engine today. Hauled the pallet jack and engine hoist out and went to work. Got the whole pallet/engine crate out of the garage out on to the pad in front of the shop for some working room. After some rearranging I was able to get the engine/crate bottom off of the pallet. This allowed me to get the engine hoist over the engine so I could lift it. From there, it was a straight lift off the crate.
It was a little bit of a puzzle to get the engine mount onto the engine. I had to disconnect some lines and move them out of the way. Then a little twisting and cajoling the mount into place. The bolts went right in and I got them all torqued down.
Then, Chris helped me guide it as we rolled the whole hoist with the engine dangling up into place. After a little manipulation and we got the bolts inserted into the fuselage without any problem. Of course the added weight made the shocks and tires squat a bit. We were careful to check that the added weight of the engine wouldn't tip the plane forward. For security, I added a 35lb weight to the rear and tied the tail wheel to the bench.
After adding some air to the tires and nitrogen to the shocks, it's sitting closer to normal now.
