A few little jobs....

There are only a few pages in the plans left to do before I start on the avionics. It's down to the final handful of things to do before the engine installation can be called complete. For the last couple of days, Pete and I have been wrapping up our individual jobs. Pete is still working on the tail cone, a part that somewhat surprisingly seems to be just as much work as the canopy.

While he worked on that, I installed the oil lines. There are three, and each had presented its own unique challenge. The fist line runs from the oil reservoir to the left hand fitting on the oil cooler. As such, it has a pretty long route to traverse. Getting it to slide down behind the engine and across the top of the muffler was like a Lilliputian threading a needle.

The second runs from the right hand side of the cooler to the oil outlet on the engine. This one was tricky because it seems to be way too long. I'm not sure where I'm going to keep all of the extra hose.

The third was the worst of the bunch. It runs from the oil reservoir to the oil inlet on the bottom of the engine. This one not only had the needle threading challenges of the first one but also had the really fun aspect of having to be attached to a fitting blocked almost completely by the muffler. We struggled with it for awhile but eventually had to remove the muffler to get the fitting on.

The fittings are only finger tight at this point (hey, someone remind me of that later if I don't ever mentioning having tightened them) until the lower cowl can be put back on the plane. That's required to confirm that the oil cooler will fit properly onto the cowl. Once it is in place, the oil lines will presumably move into their favorite at rest, no stress position. That's when I'll tighten them up.

Can't do that until the cooling duct weather seal is applied.

Clamping the seal around the rounded corner required a custom bent piece of scrap metal:

Note that it would have been easier to keep the seal in place had I waited until the silicone that holds it in place had set up before I made the cut in the corner. (Yes, just like the instructions said to. I jumped ahead.)

Meanwhile, Pete, who has apparently learned everything there is to know about the dropping of parts into very hard to find and even harder to retrieve locations, finally found a nutplate that he had dropped. The extraction of said nutplate required some finesse.

Still waiting for the silicone holding the cooling duct seal to cure, I moved on to applying some of the heat shielding that will protect the cowl from the higher temperatures of the exhaust headers and the muffler.

First step: create a template out of scrap paper.

Next step: cut out the aluminum sheet to match the template.

The thin aluminum sheet has adhesive already on it, so it just gets pushed into place. Then clear epoxy resin is spread around the edges to help hold it in place.

Mine ended up being a bit wrinkly.

There are a couple of more spots that require heat shield, but the cowl has to be on the airplane to accurately determine where they need to go. Once everything has set up (silicone and resin), I'll put the cowling back on and mark the areas that are closest to the #1 and #2 exhaust headers - that's where the remaining heat shield will go.