Engine Installation 30% complete

First step is the contruction of a firewall which will keep any fire/smoke from the engine compartment from entering the cabin area.  It is made of stainless steel and riveted with stainless steel rivets.  In this photo, it has been temporarily assembled to check for fit before riveting.
Here the firewall is shown in position on the fuselage.  Five holes will be drilled in it for the engine mount.  Moments after this photo was taken I backed into the razor sharp firewall with the back of my arm and ended up spending sunday afternoon in the ER getting stitches.  Notice in subsequent photos all the edges have electrical tape over them.
The bushing for the front gear piston needed to be reamed out in a venturi shape so that the piston would only touch the middle when plunging up and down, to keep the piston from binding as the angle changes, the openings in the ends needed to be larger than in the middle.  Rather than do this imprecisely with a file I put it on the lathe.
After the engine mount is sanded to remove the powder coating the bronze bushing above is press fit into the engine mount with an arbor press and Loctite 680 to hold it in place.
Here everything is test fit into place before installing the radiator.  This is about as far as I can go in the engine installation process without buying the engine itself.
Here the radiator has been mounted. 
   
   
  Purchasing the $15,000 engine will be one of the last steps in the building process.  I anticipate doing this in about March of 2007

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