Stjohn's RV-7

4 hours.
Well, i went and did it.. I got an engine.. A Lycoming O-360-F1A6 with 951 hours on it. After getting it home, I realized some work will have to be done to make it viable, if I may understate the case a bit. Right now, it’s sitting on an engine stand with about 7 gallons of oil in it, bathing the internals so it doesn’t turn into a hunk of rust. It’s a little frightening, since it’s really big, and really heavy, and I don’t know any A&P’s. The guy I was going to call is… unavailable. It will need a forward-facing sump so I can throw on an AFP FI system and I’ll need to get a governor that matches my prop. I hope this doesn’t turn out to be a nasty, expensive mess. Until now I had no idea how many places one of those damned things could leak from, and part of it’s my fault. I just HAD to pull off a rocker cover and get a peek at the valves, which, as advertised, were wet with oil.
So I whacked together an engine stand based on Mike Snook’s design. It was a logistical nightmare, renting the hoist, taking delivery, and actually mounting the thing on the stand. Until you’ve done it, you have no idea how awkward an ungainly a 200+ pound block of inert metal can be, especially when it must be treated with extreme care and be manipulated a certain way. What I would have given for a Caterpillar PWL. Then there was the whole oil issue. 7 gallons of oil tries to squeeze out every hole and crack. It runs out the hollow crank in front, it runs out of the magneto gaskets, it runs out of the rocker cover I took off, it runs out of the cooler fittings. I really didn’t think about all that when I flipped it over on the rotisserie and started funneling the Texas Tea into the inverted sump. So I had to find and plug every leak. As it is, I’ve still got a funnel under the rocker and a rag under the centerline of the engine on the T-bar of the stand. It’s scary. I took the ring gear off and sealed up the front with a 2″ jim cap from the aviation department at B&B hardware, but it’s not as nice as one of those little red caps on the TMX-360 on the Mattituck site. I searched high and low for one of those to no avail.
Meanwhile, here are some pics of the engine in the days of and after its arrival:

First day I was able to mess with it. Got the thing hoisted up in preparation for mounting on the stand. Simba is very curious about this heavy thing emanating all the strange odors in his backyard. Here it still has all the Cessna 172RG baffles on it, which will be removed later.

Right now, Simba’s had enough of this thing but he trusts it well enough to turn his back on it.

On the stand. I know it looks like it’s sagging, but it’s not.

From the front.