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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. |
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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. |
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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. |
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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. |
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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. |
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Here the radiator has been mounted. |
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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 |