Saturday, April 14, 2018

Wing skins and a little engine work

Yea, I guess its been a couple of weeks since I've posted anything.  I've been busy when I could be but really this past couple of weeks have not been exceptionally productive.  A few things have happened so ....

I am ready to rivet the bottom skins on the wings.  There is a lot of wire that has to be run down the wings so I decided to do a little wiring before I put the skins in place.  This was kind of fun to switch gears a little and work on something that's not aluminum.  The right wing is partially wired now with the coax for the VOR antenna, the landing light, and the strobe/nav lights.  I started running the wires for the AP roll servo but since I'm not 100% certain how much wire will be needed in the fuselage I have put that on hold for now.

I also started riveting the inner bottom skin on the left wing.  This is going very slow because my back is a bit sore.   Amy and I were rear ended on the highway last week and while it seems neither of us is hurt permanently I did end up with some back pain.  Its slowly going away now so hopefully I will be able to move a little faster with the riveting.

Finally the engine is home.  Harry and I drove to Bremerton last weekend and picked it up after a very unsatisfying round of discussions with the owner of Avian Aeronautics who insisted on charging me $2400 more than was originally quoted.  We finally came to an understanding but I won't be taking any more engines to that shop while the current owner is running the show.  The lead mechanic was a good guy to work with and he seems to do great work so I'm happy with that side of the equation.

Oh, I also spent a bit of time in the past couple of weeks finishing up my annual condition inspection and taking care of a few tasks that I had on my list for the 9A.  One of the tasks was to install a couple of headset hangars under the panel.  While doing so I found that the passenger side air vent had almost broke free from it's glue mount.  There was about 40% of the glue holding it on.  When I removed the vent I found that I had neglected to scuff up the aluminum before applying the epoxy.  I took care of that and then re attached with some good epoxy.  No pictures, just lots of scraped and scratched skin where I was using a wire wheel under the panel to remove the remaining glue.

On with the show...

Inside view of the connector on the wing tip.  This connector has wires for the landing lights and the Nav/Strobe lights.

And outside view of the two connectors installed in the wing rib.  The loops in the wire are there so that if I need to pull the connectors out there is enough slack to allow them to come out the end of the wing.  Much easier than trying to work inside the wing with my arms in the lightening holes.

Started riveting the bottom skins.  This is done completely blind and as you can see by looking at the right rivet in the picture not all rivets come out pretty.  I will drill this one out and redo it because I'm pretty sure it's strength is compromised by the over driving of the rivet.

These two rivets look better but you can see on one that the bucking bar moved off to the side  toward the end...easily fixed.

Here it is...my bright yellow engine block.  Ben was nice enough to loan me his engine hoist and his help to get the engine mounted on the stand.