Still working on the 9

I'm getting a little antsy to get started on the fuselage of the 10 but I promised myself that I would finish up a few projects on the 9 before I dug in to the 10.  So, what are these projects?  First I formed a new induction shroud for my intake.  The one I had in place was a 3D printed shroud with some fiberglass haphazardly slapped on to protect it from the exhaust heat.  It looked horrid but it did the job.  Now I have a nice new (painted) shroud with a slightly different flow profile.  I flew it this weekend and it worked perfectly.

Second I have been wanting to install some sort of automatic alternate air induction system that would keep the engine turning if I had some blockage in the filter or inlet port.  The blockage could come from flying into a heavy snow fall, ice, or even a simple plastic bag on takeoff/landing. 

Both of the first two projects are complete and the only remaining project is getting close.  The final project was to fabricate some sort of oil cooler exit shroud that would allow me to regulate oil temperature in the winter.  With the new oil cooler in place I expect I will have a hard time getting the oil temperature up to 180 degrees in the winter without some sort of ability to control the air flow.  Some people just block off the inlet air flow but since I pull my cabin heat from the oil cooler outlet I need the inlet air to flow normally.

Wow, this one looks weird.  This is looking down the snorkel of the new induction cone.  That black circle in the middle is the top of my K&N air filter.

The new snorkel from the outside.  Much better looking than the old one...and a bit lighter too.

Here is the new alternate air induction ports.  Actually you only see one of them here but there are 4 of these little openings on the circumference of the induction base.  My finger is pointing at the spring loaded door that is kept shut by both spring pressure and induction air pressure.  If the inlet gets blocked for any reason the engine will quickly go to manifold pressure (which is a vacuum) and the air from inside the cowl will force these little doors open thereby providing air for combustion.  The little fan up front will keep turning which means the pilot stays cool.

Here I am pushing the spring loaded door open.

The 9A is running again

Not much 10 work to report this week since I think I spent most of the time working on getting the 9A back in running condition...that and I was traveling for the first 3 days of the week.  However, I did get my fuel servo back from AirFlow Performance this week and unfortunately he told me that it was running on the lean side of the calibration curve.  Well that leaves only the air inlet as a potential source of over rich fuel.  The theory that was presented is that my intake is causing some turbulent air flow at the inlet of my fuel servo which is causing it to indicate a much richer mixture is needed.  So I am going to be doing a few things to my inlet to see if I can eliminate that issue but first I am going to fly it with a few simple mods to see if it really is an issue with the air inlet.  Hence this weeks pictures.

I also took the time while the 9A was down to do a bunch of little things to the airplane.  I had a flat tire on the pilot side so while I had that wheel off to replace the tube I decided it was time to replace the brake pads on both sides.  I also spent a lot of time sealing up some of the small holes I found in my baffles that were hard to see with all the inlet ducting installed.  As an oddity I also took a file to the cooling fins between the valve guides...its one area where the casting process can leave a lot of "slag" and that also can affect cooling.

First up I decided to take a picture of the air inlet to my oil cooler.  I am going to have to do some work on this some day as well as I think I can make the airflow much smoother into the cooler with should help with cooling.

Next up you can barely see it here but on the left side of the picture you can see my new inlet ducting with the alternate air filer installed.  Look at the next picture and it might make more sense.

Here is a better view of the new inlet ducting.  This is the first configuration I tried and when I attempted to install the lower cowling I found that there is no way to make the alternate air duct fit inside on this side.  However, Jeff or Harry suggested I might be able to make it work if I removed my alternator and installed one on the vacuum pad on the aft end of the engine.

In this picture you can see the narrow channel that the air ducting has to fit in.

So here it is with the alternator removed and the new inlet ducting installed.  Works perfectly!!  However, now I have to buy a new alternator.  I guess that's ok because I need one for the 10 anyway.  One thing to note on this view is the huge gap between the new inlet duct and the cowling inlet bung.  I am going to have to fabricate a reducer that is about 3" long to bridge that gap.

Its been a good week

I have to say that I am happy with this weeks progress.  I took care of several items that are on the list of things that need to get done before the move to the hangar.  I got to go flying with Jeff and Harry again which is always fun and a great motivator.  And last but not least I had a wonderful Christmas thanks to Amy.  She really takes Christmas to heart and the house is nicely decorated, there are presents under the tree for everybody and there is true Christmas spirit in the house.

Back to the progress of this week.  You recall that last week I made the decision to give up on the center console and that means I had to redo the throttle and mixture cables.  I had concerns that the brackets I fabricated for the engine would have to be re-done but I am happy to report that the new cables use the same ends as the old cables and seem to be the same length so it looks like my brackets will work!  That should save me about a day of work.  Along those lines I also had to re-do my switch panel because the one I had did not have enough room for the holes that the throttle and mixture controls go through.  I decided to try out a local company that did a presentation at one of our EAA chapter meetings.  They have some software that you can use to design any panel and then order it directly.  They will mill it to specification and even fill in any engraving you have.  I'm excited about getting that next week...hopefully early next week so I can finish up the cockpit.

Its a little hard to see unless you click on the picture to go full size but this is the new switch panel design that I sent to Front Panel Express.  I can't wait to get the final product.

OK, on to the pictures...

After lots of work on the induction system I think I am going to call it good.  I have a little work on the alternate air portion but otherwise it is ready.  This is a shot of the inlet with a nice gap.

And here is the clearance from the lower cowl.

Taking a page out of Jeff's book I decided to put small windows in the inspection covers for the elevator push-rod ends.  This is a picture of the inside with the new windows installed.

And this is a picture of the inspection cover installed.  I think it is going to work nicely!

I finally got a chance to set up my "paint booth" to prime the baffle parts.  I ended up cutting the paint booth down a bit so I could easily put it away and take it out when I needed it.

I also took the time to "glue" the finger pull to the top of the slider canopy.  This should help with the opening of the canopy when its fully closed.

Finally I spent Sunday doing nut-plates on the wings since I have to wait for the switch panel to get finished before I move forward on the fuselage.  Yes, all day (except for the time I took off to watch the Seahawks game).  There were 78 nut-plates installed today.  That doesn't sound like much but stop to consider how much work that is...I had to match drill three holes per nut-plate, debur and dimple those 234 holes, and then rivet the nut-plates to the wing.  Oh and since I was working blind I ended up missing one end of the nut-plate on 4 holes that meant I had to drill out the rivets and try again.

These are the wing root fairing nut plates. 30 nut plates and about 18 more on the fuel tanks yet to do.

One of the six lower wing access plates.  Can you see the boo boo in this picture?  I caught it after I took the picture.

Test fitting the cover plates.

And one of the access plates finished including the screws.

Time to take a break

I am so frustrated with this plenum that I have decided to move on.  I'm going to break something or say something I shouldn't so its best to just start working on something enjoyable while I ponder my next steps on the plenum.  As it stands right now my options are to jury-rig it to make it work until I get some time to make a new one (that fits) or just bite the bullet and design my own now.  Its sad that I paid $460 for piece of fiberglass that I can't use.  I guess the bright side of the whole issue is I learned a lot about plenums in the past week!

So moving on I decided it was time to work on the oil cooler ducting....

First step was to pull the oil cooler off the firewall so I could do the fiberglass layup directly on the cooler.  Here you see the cooler with a Styrofoam mold that I formed using sheets of Styrofoam board hot glued together and then molded with a saw and sandpaper into the shape I wanted.

Another picture of the mold from the other side.

Next I laid up a couple of layers of fiberglass tape followed by a layer of carbon fiber for stiffness.  The carbon fiber cloth was a very heavy weave so it frayed all over the place.  for the piece that goes on the back of the baffles I will attempt to use my vacuum bagging process.

Here it is after I chipped the foam out of it, smoothed the outside with micro/epoxy and then sprayed a coat of high build primer on it.  I still have some build-up around the flange where it got a bit thin but its looking pretty good so far.

While I wait for the first part to dry I started working on the baffle part.  I forgot to take a picture of it after I had formed the mold but its similar to the first piece except this one has a flat flange that will bolt to the aft baffles.  You will see it once I get it trimmed.  My vacuum pump was putting out a lot of oil vapor or smoke so I only let it run for a couple of hours.  I hope that was enough to let the epoxy set up hard enough to hold shape.  We will see in 12 hours what it looks like....

Oh, I also started fitting the induction system to the lower cowl.  Well as is par for the course the past week or so, it didn't fit.  I few iterations of trimming and I got it to fit length wise.  However, Will sells two version of the backing plate, one that is normal and one with an angle in it that is suppose to work well for cold air induction systems like mine.  Well, turns out my air inlet is almost perfectly aligned with the fuel servo inlet so I need a different backing plate.  See the picture below.

See that beveled shadow?  It shouldn't be there.

Even after trimming about an inch off the end I am just barely fitting.  I still need to trim at least another quarter inch off the end unless the new backing plate gives me the room I need, which it might.

Here is the view from the outside looking down the air inlet.  You can see the fuel servo back there (blue tape covering the air inlet) and its pretty close to perfectly aligned.

I finished sanding the windshield fairing and shot a coat of primer to check the actual condition.  Turns out it was pretty good and only a little more sanding was required to smooth it up a bit more.

And after the last coat of primer I removed the masking and plastic and here it is!  Its not perfect but I am very happy with how it has turned out.  Now I need to finish up the canopy skirt and I will have met my goal for the summer of finishing the plexi work.

Fall begins

We rolled into Fall this week and it made me look back at the last 18 months.  Fall always feels like things are "winding down" and as such its a good time to reflect on where we have been.  In relation to this dream of mine to build an airplane I have nothing but wonderful memories.  I am so unbelievably fortunate to have the life I have and the people that are in it.  OK, now for some progress report pictures.

First I have to follow up on my "issue" from Thursday.  So in the post I mentioned that it was going to set me back "hours" or possibly "days".  Well fortunately it was only hours.  I was able to separate the cowling halves with just a little extra "force".  We are now back on track!

The 'glass has been laid in this picture.  Now its a matter of fill and sand, followed by more fill and sand...

After a little sanding the transition from the skin to the windshield is looking good on the forward edges.

The Top and sides still need a little work.  In fact I had to add a few more layers of carbon fiber and fiberglass to the roll bar lip to strengthen it a bit.  In this picture I have just added another layer of flox to be sanded down.  Another couple of iterations of flox and sanding should get me close to complete on this task.

If you look closely at the spaces between the inlets in the middle of this picture you can see where I laid several layers of fiberglass to form the flange for the front of the cowling.

Hanging the cowling so the fiberglass can set up on the inlet rings.

A bit hard to see but the white section is my new inlet ring grooved seat.  There is one very similar on the bottom cowl and when the two are mated it creates a very nice and secure mount for the inlets.

This is part of the induction system.  The induction system allows fresh outside air to pass through a filter and then feed the engine.  In this picture I had to add some fiberglass (ok a bit too much I agree) to the end to lengthen the inlet.  In the next picture you can see what it looked like when I was done.

Sanded and ready for more work.

One aspect to all the fiberglass work I am doing is I have to wait long periods of time once I do a layup waiting for the epoxy to harden.  So, I decided to get started on the baffles.  The baffles help direct the cool outside air over the cooling fins on the cylinders.  The engine is air cooled so its important that as much cooling air as possible flows where it will do the most good.  That's a lot of parts!  I thought I was about done with deburring, dimpling and riveting....ha!

So I got the back part of the baffling installed temporarily.  Then I set the James air plenum on the engine to see how much work it will require...Lets just say I have my work cut out for me....  Fit is not good.