1.5 hours.
The front baffles from the O-360 kit don’t fit at all. No surprise there, the front of my engine is more like the six-cylinder O-540 that goes on the RV-10, the Harmon Rocket II, and which a couple of gnarly dudes have shoehorned into an RV-7 like mine.
This is the problem. This big piece of meat right behind the flywheel (the toothy thing on the left) is where the governor mounts. Putting the front baffles between this and the flywheel didn’t give me nearly enough clearance between the baffle and the flywheel to make me happy, so I’m glad I ordered the front baffles from the O-540 kit from Van’s.
Here’s another shot. The floor baffle needed a good chunk trimmed away to accommodate that big flat boss below the governor pad. I have no idea what that is, other than a place to mount an air conditioning compressor, and that’s so not going to happen. I read the TCDS’s on this engine today and this fat little bastard weighs in at roughly 40lbs more than its conventional cousins, so I’m not about to start bolting on more heavy things up front.
The right baffle went on OK with some trimming, but it’s a no go: It puts the line of the baffle wall right down the centerline of the governor, which necessitates the O-540 baffle for that side too. The io-390 guys all had to make new ones, which I might do, but I can use the pattern of the 540 baffles to help out with that, and there are also pdf’s on the io-390.com site.
So that’s where it’s at. The #1 and #3 side baffles are done, but I have to put the supports on the floor baffles. Then, when my new parts come in, I can finish the rough install before fitting the cowling and trimming all the baffles to final shape.
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