« Posts tagged engine

Engine Start, Part 1.

September 15, 2013 / posted in Finishing / No Comments

6 hours.

A tiring and ultimately unsuccessful day.   Dave and I went out to the airport with the intention of starting the engine for the first time.   We were off to a stellar start: I’d forgotten my airport key card; it was still attached to my motorcycle safety vest at home. I didn’t notice it until we were actually in Oxnard, so that sucked.   We did manage to find somebody to let us in, then went about the business of readying the plane for engine start.   We dumped 8 quarts of oil in the tube, then attempted to time the magnetos.    This is harder than it sounds.   Once we actually figured out how to use the buzz box, the cylinder plug, and our own eyes, we got the mags in and timed to the engine.   That’s when the fun started.

We wheeled the plane outside and prepared to start it up.   We left the distributor caps off the mags so we could spin the engine a bit and pre-oil it.   with four plugs removed, we were able to spin the engine around and get oil into all the nooks and crannies and actually see an oil pressure reading come up on the EFIS.      Prop spins, there’s oil, let’s start it!  Foolish us.   Slick magnetos are designed to run when their circuit is open, that is, the two leads connected to them, when connected to each other, make the magneto safe, cold, whatever.   The AeroElectric diagram has you connecting these two switches together in such a way that the right mag fires when you’re starting and the left one doesn’t do squat until the engine’s running, that is, you’ve let go of the spring-loaded upper position toggle because the engine is running.

Somehow, I’d wired it in such a way that the mags were connected/safe when the switches were “on” and the start circuit was on.   The engine spun, but wouldn’t start.   Fortunately, safety wasn’t in question.   The way I had it wired, no matter what position the toggles were in, the mags were grounded, so it’s not like the prop would have taken our faces off.

By the time we’d gotten wind of the problem, it was too late to debug and we were tired.  Tired people working with dangerous things tend to get hurt, so we packed it in and crawled home, after begging to be let out the airport gate.

Equal parts forward and back.

August 26, 2013 / posted in Electrical, Finishing, Firewall Forward, Fuselage, Panel / No Comments

6 hours.

One of these days, I’ll move forward without moving backwards.  Today I had to dismount the EFIS in preparation for taking it to MGL Avionics.   Apparently the OAT module is fried.  I tried it with a new probe last week, no dice.   Maybe, if I’m lucky, I’ll be able to drop it off tomorrow on my lunch hour.   Other than that annoyance, I got the tailwheel hardware primed, something I should have done long ago, and I got my spark plugs torqued in.   But now, for some mysterious reason, the tailwheel steering chains don’t reach their mounting points on the rudder anymore.   It’s possible I had the steering link on upside down/backwards, which would have accounted for the missing 3/4″ of chain necessary to bridge the gap between what I need and what I’ve got.   Looks like I’ll be ordering another set of tailwheel chains.  Grumble.

Anyway, once I get my EFIS back from the shop, it’ll be time to prepare the engine for first start.

On another note, I’m progressing nicely in my tailwheel training.   We flew from Torrance to Hawthorne, where I did 8 landings, unassisted.   Apparently I CAN land a Citabria in 3-point attitude.   At least when the wind is coming at me and I set up the approach right.

Fiddly bits.

January 14, 2013 / posted in Firewall Forward, plotting/planning/deciding / No Comments

8 hours.

So yesterday, I joined EAA 723 at Camarillo airport. I dunno why, but I’m drawn to Camarillo. Maybe it’s because my cousin finished and flew that little hot-rodded Vari-EZE out of there many years ago, maybe it’s because it was the first place I took passengers when I got my private ticket, who knows? But I like Ventura county, and I like KCMA. It also doesn’t hurt that the EAA hangar is right near the Commemorative Air Force hangar, where there are a multitude of interesting flying machines to gawp at. Everyone seems friendly, and the guest speaker for the meeting was an FAA official, who gave us the rundown on ramp checks and a few FAR’s that are very much misinterpreted by the likes of you and I.

The goal of this is to find a nest for my bird where I can final-assemble, certify, and test fly 313TD. Currently, there isn’t any room in either of the hangars, but one gentleman is 20 hours into phase 1 on an RV7A and another is getting ready to go fly, so maybe a spot will open up soon.

Another benefit to membership is that the chapter has a flatbed trailer suitable for moving a project to the hangar, which I will hopefully need very soon. Yet another is several more sets of eyes looking at workmanship and assembly techniques.

As for actual work on the plane, I got the left intercylinder baffle and the replacement fuel pump installed, which is nice. All the wiring is re-secured where it was, and the fittings on the sensor are properly installed with thread seal.

Today, the morning was spent with my neighbor’s vast crew-cab contractor truck, schlepping stuff to and from two different Ikea stores, one in Carson, one in Costa Mesa. We’re doing this kitchen remodel, and our designer was a complete monkey: he ordered a ton of stuff we can’t/didn’t use and failed to get a bunch of things we need, so Shelley and I had to kill our morning putting everything right in preparation for the final cabinet install tomorrow.

I did get some work in on the plane, but it’s cold in Los Angeles right now, down in the 50’s during the day. You East-coasters, Northerners and Midwesterners chuckle all you want, but the little space heater in my shop wasn’t able to take the edge off, so it kind of sucked to be out there today. Cold hands bashing on metal structures when wrenches slip reminds me way too much of college street surgery, changing out a part lying on my back under a car in an icy parking lot. One of the many reasons I moved out here and stayed.

So no, it didn’t go well. First event of the day was an oh-shit moment, when I snapped the head off one of the bolts holding the throttle bracket on. That was a study in anger manangement, and I had the presence of mind to self-soothe through the initial impulses of throwing the torque wrench through the sliding glass door. Tantrums do not fix airplanes.

Fortunately, there’s an O’Reilly Auto store not a city block from my house, so I picked up an EZ-Out (sorry, screw extractor- generic) and through some miracle, managed to get the offending bolt out of the sump. I guess I’m now 1 for 5 using those things. At least I didn’t snap the drill off inside the broken bolt like I did with the wing attach adventure from a couple of years ago.

I installed the breather tube and safety-wired the mixture bracket bolts after torquing them with a different torque wrench (A Snap-On dial-type I bought used) and those are fine. I’m hoping I’m nearly done messing around with Adel clamps. Space is getting tight.

“He fixes the cable?”

December 28, 2012 / posted in Firewall Forward, Panel / No Comments

8 hours.

Yes, the title is a line from “The Big Lebowski.” You’ll find a few of those in here. Saturday, Sunday, Monday, Got some solid work in during the Xmas holiday, at least up until Christmas eve. My ACS order containing a bunch of suppplies came in during the week, so this involved making the firewall penetrations for the throttle, mixutre, and governor cable.

Since I got to firewall forward, I’ve pretty much been on the “here be monsters” part of the map, so drilling the firewall where it says to on Van’s plans was a non-starter. For one thing, the governor’s up front. For another, the Superior Cold Air sump and the AFP servo pretty much negate the use of any standard Van’s bracketry or control cable lengths.

In a way, it’s a kind of freedom: Since the plans don’t apply, you’re not bound by them. What you must do, however, is follow the rules, and that means keep things from chafing, don’t glom fuel lines on to wiring, keep things from flopping, and whatever you do, insure free and correct travel of all controls. I got some good cable routing for the throttle and mix by bringing them down through the angled part of the firewall recess. This has the effect of lifting the cables up over the rudder pedal crosstubes, then a smooth S downward and slightly to the left, which lets me bring them in more or less right behind the engine above the exhaust. I’ll show pics as soon as I get them off my phone.

I used the eyeball-type firewall pass-throughs from ACS, but in this case, even the biggest one they had wasn’t enough to accommodate the fat green cables from Van’s, so they had to be drilled out. Installing them required Shelley’s help, since getting these things in requires the holding and alignment of more things than I have hands, and putting in fasteners as well. Smashing success though, the cables work smoothly with full travel.

Here, you can see the one for the governor cable, doing its thing:

You can also see the purge valve cable, running alongside before taking its right turn. The bracket for the purge valve cable and the number 2 injector line is an idea I stole from somebody on VAF: A piece of aluminum angle bolted to the case and drilled for Adel clamps in 2 places. Of course, this means replacing the case bolt with an AN4 one of a length I don’t currently have, but I guess that’s why it’s good that ACS is only an hour’s drive and 2 days’ delivery away. That brown hose snaking out over the baffling is the fuel purge return line, which will get a corresponding hole drilled in the baffles.

Once the cables made their way through the firewall, they needed to be attached to the quadrant. Somehow. I knew there was going to be some metal fabrication (yay!), and way back when I built the rails for the quadrant, I figured there would be some sort of hare-brained rig holding it all together, and this weekend was the time to actually build the thing.

This is the shape it wound up in:

This started out as 3 pieces of 2x2x1/8″ angle. Through a series of moves that involved cleco-clamping, measuring, marking, and finally cutting, I came up with a structure that gave me a bracket with 3 holes for the cable ends, each with enough room to turn the nuts on the cable. I managed to get the measurement for the attach angles by securing the cables into the part with the 3 holes, then drilling the attach angles to the angles holding the quadrant itself.

In its final form, it looks like this:

The clevises on the cable ends are special ones with 10/32 thread, and finding them was kind of a bitch. They give you the range of travel you need, but it’s a bit of a puzzle to get them all installed without them interfering with each other. As it was, I had to squeeze the middle one in the vise (not much) and come up with an arrangement for the clevis pins that allowed the maximum amount of space between them. I still wound up grinding down the middle one (blue handle, prop rpm) so that it didn’t catch on the left one (throttle), because these things binding on you in flight would be a major downer, possibly literally. But the control cables are in, they work, they’re smooth and functional. One thing I am going to have to do at some point is make some cover plates for the sides of the quadrant, because the levers are basically three little guillotines, hungrily awaiting careless fingers.

More control cable work.

December 20, 2012 / posted in Firewall Forward / No Comments

9 hours.

I owe you a report from the last two sessions, which were on 12/1 and 12/2, and 12/15 and 12/16. The week of 12/4, we went to Florida for vacation, and nothing got done. Upon returning, I did some work on control brackets. Turns out my fancy bracket that I made for the purge valve cable isn’t going to work, because there’s no threaded part where the engine-side end of the cable is. What I’m doing is using a piece of angle, which will allow me to hold the cable in place with an Adel clamp.

The other thing I did was fiddle around a lot with cable routing. Supposedly the 51″ and 52″ cables from Van’s should work for the mix and throttle, but I wasn’t exactly sure about that, so I ordered the 60″ ones. Those, I’m sure, can be routed to where they need to be on the throttle quadrant. On the engine side, it was pretty interesting. I wish someone had told me I could have had AFP reverse the mixture direction, because if that had happened, there’d be no danger of interference between the cables, arms or hardware. Maybe on the next plane I build. Lol. Anyway, I was able to find positions for the cables that allows the arms to move freely and not interfere through their entire range of travel, and that’s a good thing. Unfortunately, I’m looking at running those things fairly close to the exhaust pipes, so good thing I’ve got heatshields, both the solid kind that clamps to the pipe and some of the cloth-type stuff that can wrap around the cables.

With that solved, it was time to make some bracket, which meant more steel. I’ve more or less made my peace with steel, other than the fact that it burns up bandsaw blades like crazy. I first mocked up the brackets out of .032 aluminum, just to get the angles and holes right, then hammered the mockup flat to use as a template on the steel, which reminds me: Superior Air Parts, you bastards, why couldn’t you have made the bolt spacing for engine brackets on your cold-air sump the same as on the Lycoming sumps? Huh? If it wasn’t for that, there’s a good chance one of the stock Van’s brackets would have worked.

It wasn’t all bad, I was able to obtain a PDF of the dimensioned drawing of the bottom of the sump, and from that I was able to drill the mounting holes in my fabbed steel brackets fairly easily. Of course, I didn’t have any of the hardware necessary to attach anything, so I had to make a fairly severe ACS order. In that order, I got 3 more of the firewall eyeballs (which I’ll have to drill out to fit the fat green marine-style Van’s cable), a bunch of rod-end bearings, and some other bits and pieces, including the 2×1/8 angle I’ll need to fabricate the quadrant-side bracket. If I can ever get away from work, the remodel, and my recovering dog (long story, and not a good one), I should be able to finish up the control systems.

Oh, and I’ve also ordered all the hoses I need from PHT, so I should be able to rock out all the engine plumbing as well.

FWF Sensor Wiring DONE!

October 29, 2012 / posted in Electrical, Firewall Forward / No Comments

10 hours.

This is yesterday and today. Yesterday started with an epic shop cleaning. I have those every so often, and it’s helpful, extremely good to have a workbench devoid of clutter, if only for a little while. Stuff got put away, stuff got tossed out, floors got swept and vacuumed.

The fiddling with the FWF stuff has been progressing as well as I can make it, and the wiring has been a bit of a challenge, especially since the K-Type wires on 2 of the sensors were too short to make it all the way to the RDAC engine monitor module. Then there’s the business of where to actually run things so they don’t rub on other bits or get roasted alive by the exhaust pipes. I got the current sensor done, although I suspect I’ll have to flip it over, I got all the temperature sensor wires run, wrapped, and grounded. About the only thing that didn’t happen is the MAP sensor, which needs a 1/8″ to 1/8″ barbed elbow fitting. Searches have turned up no such animal so far. But technically, that’s not wiring, so legally speaking my FWF sensor wiring is done.


Here’s the beginning of the attachment process. The overbraid K-type wires are a ratbastard to work with. They’re a little like shielded cable, but they’ve got an extra woven sheath below the braid that absolutely sucks to try to get off. Maybe there’s a trick to it, but this was by far the worst suckage of this task.


A slightly different angle. On the RDAC (the grey box), the first 4 pairs are exhaust gas temperature thermocouple inputs. Can’t change them, which kind of sucks, because then I wouldn’t have had to extend a couple of TC wires to make them reach the proper input. Oh yeah, splicing TC wire sucks too. The ty-wrapped snarl at the bottom is the FloScan fuel flow sensor wiring. I installed the FloScan months ago, but never got around to properly wiring it until today.


Still a rat’s nest, but there is progress there. This is right after grounding all the things that needed grounding, being the FloScan, the tach sensor, and the RDAC itself. The EGT and CHT probe wires haven’t been cut to length yet, nor have they been secured by Adel clamps to the firewall.


Ahhh, that’s better. Still some wrapping to be done, but all the wiring is secured and attached.


This shows the oil pressure sensor hooked up and run into the bundle. This will benefit from a couple of Adel clamps attaching the main bundle to the engine mount, but we’re in a pretty good place.

Even more fun: Once I got everything wired, I fired up the EFIS and decided to test out whether or not I’d actually inserted the right wires into the right terminals on the RDAC. This was done by means of a heat gun and a blowtorch. The heat gun raised the temperature of the actual cylinder itself so I could check the reading on the EFIS. The blowtorch was for the EGT probes. Suffice it to say that the method of testing was a great success: I found I had miswired the 1 and 3 cylinders for EGT, and the 2 and 4 cylinders for CHT. It is now all fixed.

Some sensor wiring.

October 4, 2012 / posted in Firewall Forward / No Comments

1.5 hours

Tonight I was able to do a little more work on the engine sensor wiring. Mostly it was about figuring out routing and wrapping hi-temp spiral wrap around probe wires, which is such a chore. Not as bad as Adel clamps though. I have to figure out the technique for those, because they’re killing my fingers. Anyway, the major visual effect achieved tonight is now the plug wires don’t hang out the bottom like sword-slashed entrails. I also got started on wrapping/routing the probe wires, but the wrap will have to come off because I forgot about the MGL current sensor that’s supposed to go on the alternator wire. Grmp. I also had to splice one of the EGT wires, because it was too short to make it all the way to the RDAC. I’m a little concerned about that. Oh, and I have no idea what wire goes to which cylinder. Yep. Awesome, that’s me.

I’m sick of this airplane. My wife is REALLY sick of this airplane. I need to get it done, and soon.

Baffles 15 – Almost done!

July 7, 2012 / posted in Firewall Forward / No Comments

6.5 hours

Today was fairly significant, even though it might not look it. I finished attaching the airseal material to all the baffles, drilled the holes for the spark plug wires, and more or less permanently attached the baffles to the engine.


Since I did the aft left baffle last time, I figured I’d do the aft right baffle, that way I could at least get both of them on and done. this one actually proved to be pretty easy, with no surprises. After all, it was more or less about doing the spark plug wire grommet holes, deburring everything, and attaching the airseal with rivets.

The connection in the middle where the baffle connects to the bracket got changed a little. Originally, I had the bracket pinning the airseal between it and the baffle, but that looked stupid and distorted the baffle, so I cut some slits in the baffle to get around the bracket. It should seal fine, and eventually the rubber will mold itself around the bracket with hours of heat and use.


With both sets of aft baffles on, I installed the oil cooler. This was one of the items that’s been bugging me for a while, and now it’s finally done. I’m still not happy about the amount of flex in the aft baffle where the inboard oil cooler attaches, but I’m not exactly sure what to do about it right now. Any reinforcing strut that picks up a convenient attach point on the engine would interfere with the fuel injector lines, which is no good. This shot shows the beefy angle bracket I installed last time to reinforce the connection between the side and rear parts of the baffle, and gives the oil cooler bolts a more solid structure to hang from. Lots of people report problems in this area, but this, and a strut for the other side usually fixes it.


So here it is, the bane of my life, nearly finished. I recut the governor baffle, because the governor hole didn’t seal well enough for my taste, and this time around, I left a big dog-ear flap on the front to aid in sealing with the cowl, should the need arise. I didn’t take a lot of photos of the process of installing the governor baffle seal, because it’s difficult to shoot pictures while you’re using both hands to wrestle with airseal. The end of the governor is bigger than the housing where the seal sits, so you have to cut the hole big enough to get over the end, but small enough to seal on the governor housing.

This process also revealed a small flaw in my governor baffle design: I can’t actually take the baffle off without removing the governor. I can live with this, I think. But what I have to do to get at the governor nuts is take the left front baffle off, which can’t be done with the governor and its baffle in place. But there’s always a way. It’s messy, and it’s a hack, but disconnecting the oil line from the #2 cylinder allows me to drop the left front baffle out of the way and slip it out past the governor baffle.

I also put the airbox on, just to see everything in place, and make sure it all still fits. What you see in the photo is essentially the final configuration of the baffles and intake.

I still have a few minor things to do. I need to drill the duct holes for the mags and alternator, but I don’t want to do that until I’ve figured out control cable routing. I also need to make the rods securing the baffles at the bottom where they wrap around the cylinders. Once that’s all set up, I’ll need to squidge some red RTV in where the airseal meets the baffles, and around the engine-baffle interface in various places, plus around the corners of the oil cooler so I get maximum efficiency from the airflow through that.

Baffles 14 and Oil Cooler

July 5, 2012 / posted in Firewall Forward / No Comments

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.

Baffles 13

June 18, 2012 / posted in Firewall Forward / No Comments

5 hours.

Lucky 13. This baffles thing is second to none the worst, most vexing part of this build yet.  However, I did make a lot of progress this weekend. I got the airseal material trimmed, for the most part, although I suspect I’ll have to iterate the left front a bit, the part that goes around the governor. This is no end of head-scratching and puzzlement. Today I was actually able to drill the airseal material to the baffle sides, which is a big step, and with the exception of what I just mentioned about the front governor, the top cowl seems to seal all the way around, which is a good thing. Never having built an airplane before, it’s hard to tell if I’m overthinking a problem. The key is to keep focused on the end result desired, and solutions will appear. On this particular task, they take their sweet time doing so, and this is the one task on this build where I’m not able to stand back and go “yeah, that’s awesome.” Instead, it’s something to be gotten through, like a prostate exam or tax forms.

I’ll post as much of a photo story as I can in a later entry, but I didn’t take a whole lot, and part of the reason for that is that it’s really difficult to see anything inside the cowl with all the parts installed, let alone jam a camera up in there and shoot comprehensible pictures.

There are also a number of things that need to get finished before this can be called “done” so I’ll list them here and hope to get at them this week.

The pain in iteration comes from having to put on and take off the baffles. This is a time consuming process, and needs to happen several times before all the finishing touches can be done, but it’s not a good idea to install things permanently because depending on various factors they’ll just have to come off again. So here’s a list of unfinished business, in no particular order:

  • Make tab for left front lower ramp to close off gap near engine case.
  • Drill rear bracket to rear baffle
  • Make/install fasteners for front/rear side baffles
  • Drill ducts for alternator and magnetos
  • Drill/install spark plug wire grommets
  • Proseal corners of snorkel at the filter bracket
  • Finish making front left baffle seal sections
  • Trim cowl for lower left inlet ramp
  • Rivet oil cooler reinforcing bracket to baffles
  • Drill/install oil cooler doubler and bracket
  • Deburr baffle seal rivet holes
  • Pop-rivet baffle seals to baffle metal
  • Glue/fiberglass top cowl inlet ramps/seal inlet ramp sides, shape ramp interface
  • Permanently install prop governor, gasket and all
  • Recut governor/front left seal material
  • Make/install lower cowl inlet seals

It’s endless, I’m telling you.  But with this out of the way, it’s time for plumbing, wiring, and control cables.  When that’s done, I’ll rivet the top skin on, put the canopy back on, and finish the interior.  After that, it’s time to go to the airport!

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