5 hours.<\/p>\n
Mostly a cleanup day. And a rearrange day. And a figure-out-what-to-do-next day. So there was cleanup. I rearranged the guest house bedroom and gained back a few more precious square feet. Then I went over the construction manual and checked off things I know I did but didn’t check them off during the actual work, mostly from wing mating. After that, I screwed the panel back on and started tinkering with the throttle quadrant. I didn’t get far with that. I needed to get the canopy out of the attic. It was beginning to drive me nuts that it was sitting up there, with the spiders and the heat. So I brought it down and then I realized I’d never put on the canopy latch handle or the outside canopy lift tabs. Not fun, but necessary. I hate cotter pins. I got the handle and tabs done, then had to take the canopy off and put it up in the rafters of the main shop. It’s pretty empty right now. More parts are on the plane than off it, at least parts that came with the kit. Oh sure, there’s lots of fiberglassing to be done on the empennage tips, wheels, landing gear etc. <\/p>\n
But I’m at a crossroads: What next? leave the airframe for a while and do the O- to IO-360 conversion on the engine? Order avionics and start wiring? Or just do it all. Go to town. Work on the wiring while i’m waiting for engine parts and vice versa. But something tells me I’d rather not have nasty stripped-down engine between the plane and the workbench for extended periods of time unless that’s all I’m working on. Engines can be whole projects in and of themselves. But the truth is, if I find enough nastiness in the engine when I pull a cylinder off, it goes bye-bye to be rebuilt by real engine builders in real shops. If not, I replace cylinders as necessary, install the hi-pressure fuel pump, the new sump and tubes, the AFP FI system, and bolt it to the airframe. Fortunately, I’ve got all the parts for that, I think. I need to make a checklist for incidental parts, like hoses and gaskets, other stuff like that, and order it in advance. I also have to be singularly anal about the teardown process and not lose ANY PARTS WHATSOEVER and adhere strictly to the manual. This is no Oldsmobile Rocket V8.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
5 hours. Mostly a cleanup day. And a rearrange day. And a figure-out-what-to-do-next day. So there was cleanup. I rearranged the guest house bedroom and gained back a few more precious square feet. Then I went over the construction manual and checked off things I know I did but didn’t check them off during the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[15,16,18,28],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stjohn.openbar.com\/airplane\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/349"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stjohn.openbar.com\/airplane\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stjohn.openbar.com\/airplane\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stjohn.openbar.com\/airplane\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stjohn.openbar.com\/airplane\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=349"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stjohn.openbar.com\/airplane\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/349\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stjohn.openbar.com\/airplane\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=349"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stjohn.openbar.com\/airplane\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=349"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stjohn.openbar.com\/airplane\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=349"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}