8 hours.
I haven’t been working on this a lot lately, because my motivation is low, and I’m traveling for work. But I can report this time that the project is sucking a little less. Last time, I’d gotten the baffle seal material trimmed. Since then, I’ve been knocking items off my list, one by glorious one. At this point, baffle seal material is riveted to both front outboard baffles, and left rear baffle.
In addition to that, the oil cooler bracket is done, and the left rear baffle parts are all riveted together. This went surprisingly well, except for the fact that I initially installed the oil cooler double upside down, which sucks, because just flipping it over doesn’t work: The damned holes don’t line up on the sides anymore. I managed to fix this without making a huge mess, but there were a few too many extra holes for my comfort, so I beefed up the section in the corner with a piece of angle running down the vertical where the side and rear join up.
This is a shot of the rear baffle section before I cut out the hole for the actual cooler.
Making the hole for the plug wire grommet was also fun. Not that big a deal though. And finally, everything became a more or less unified piece of equipment that will hopefully serve its purpose as part of the cooling system. With the angle going up the vertical on the outboard corner, this thing is really solid, and hopefully stands up to all the engine vibration. I’m not crazy about the fact that the inboard side of the cooler is attached directly to the baffle, so I’m going to look at options for transferring the load to the engine case somehow.
Here’s everything riveted together, except the baffle seal. I’ll try to find a better photo. When I was doing this, I didn’t take a lot of photos, because I’m experimenting with a new workflow that involves periodically stopping to clean up the mess that accretes around the work area, such as tools, clecos, harware, and cast-off bits of aluminum. At some point, I’ll roll photos into that process. Yeah, I know, seven years on is a little late to be experimenting with new methodologies, but that’s why it’s called “experimental” aviation.
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