7 hours.
Memorial day weekend was decent. Got a bunch of stuff done, mostly trimming down the baffles. The final trimming still isn’t done, but I got the contour of the top inlet duct cut in. Very iterative, time-consuming process. I have to say, I’m still not altogether clear on how the airseal is supposed to work around the cowl inlets. There’s some airseal that’s supposed to go on the bottom inlet half, and I guess that’s supposed to overlap with the stuff on the baffle somehow.
the other problem I have is just how little metal I’ve got on the front baffle at the top of the arc near the governor drive gear. Still, that has to be fastened to the engine somehow, and I suppose I can reinforce it when I devise some clever system for attaching it to the engine.
I also drilled the fiberglass inlet ducts into place. Now that I have them locked in, I can glass them and fill in the inboard side so air doesn’t blow through and cost me pressure.
Apparently this game is all about air pressure, specifically, making sure that air flows through the engine compartment the way it’s supposed to, which is over and between the cylinders. I read somewhere that gaps totaling up 1 square inch where they’re not supposed to be will cost 20% of the cooling capacity. This would not be good. At all.
First thing that has to happen though is the baffles have to come off, get final trimmed, and deburred. Maybe painted. Not sure about that.
I’m starting to see one of two things: Either it’s the light at the end of the baffle tunnel, or it’s a train, which means I’ll wind up redoing them.
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