Malcolm sand blasted, painted and installed the new intake tubes for the #5 and 6 cylinders.

The paint is not a perfect match, but it’s pretty close. If it bugs me too much, I may pull the front 4 tubes and paint them as well.

So 18 months ago when Ann saw a move south was imminent, we had to figure out what to do with the airplane. The chances of finding a house with a shop big enough for the plane was not very likely. So the plan was to ship it to Malcolm. I could make the short (40 minute) flight from NW Atlanta to work on it while I was trying to find a place for the plane. Or if we never found a place for it, I could always commute..

But the move didn’t happen. And shipping it all the way back up here was too much money. And there was a possibility that we would be moving at some point soon. So we waited. And I flew down to Greenville as often as possible. Logistics were a pain. I drove the explorer down and left it at the airport so I would have transportation when I was there. Whenever I had a class to teach that was anywhere near (400 miles is “near”, right?) Greenville, I would spend a couple days working on the plane with Malcolm. It took me a while but I eventually found a nice place to stay and got into a groove of heading down to South Carolina.

At this point, there doesn’t look like there’s any chance of move so we made the call to bring the plane back home.

The big day is scheduled to be February 25th. I’ll fly down (commercial) on the 22nd and finish up a couple tasks and then start prepping the plane for the trip back north.

I really can’t say enough good things about Malcolm. His glass work (fiberglass, that is) is just spectacular. And his eye on finish work is beyond reproach. After looking at other planes at Oshkosh and Sun-n-Fun, my plane (in primer) looks WAY better than quite a few finished (and painted) airplanes. The guy is a freaking artist. If the plane hadn’t spent the last 18 months down there, I probably wouldn’t be nearly as far along as I am now. By my estimation, 1 hour of “Malcolm time” is the equivalent of 8 hours (or more) of my time.

It’ll be nice to walk out to the shop whenever I want but without a doubt, things won’t move at the same pace as when me and Malcolm are working together.

I would direct you to a previous post on modifying two of the intake tubes.

After much work and head scratching on how to modify the existing tubes, we hit a stroke of luck.

The tenets in one of the spaces where Malcolm has his shop became available. For a while it was empty. Then someone moved in. One day Malcolm met the neighbors and during the introductions found out the guy builds race cars. He was showing Allan (of Allan Pittman Race Cars) what we were trying to do and he said basically said “That? I can weld up one those from scratch.”  Well, I guess when you build cars that hit almost 200MPH in an 1/8th of a mile, this is child’s play. I also learned that when the cars go REAL fast… They only need an eighth of a mile.

So I bought the flanges and some stock tubing and gave him the parts. In about as long as it takes one of his cars to fly down the 1/8 mile strip, I had a pair of custom made intake tubes.

Custom intake tubes for the #5 and #6 cylinders

And here’s a before/after of the #5

And of the #6 cylinder

I picked up some “Continental Gold” paint and Malcolm is going to sand blast and paint them.

Then it’s time to modify the upper cowling to accommodate the main air intake. There’s simply no way around that.

This is one of those milestones that makes all the days of seemingly no progress worthwhile.

It’s a rather large file but (for me) it’s worth it.

Gear Retract

Or you can view it here on YouTube.

Since all the rigid fuel lines are in place, we moved on to the flex lines. At this point, we’ve got the boost pump to mechanical pump line and the vapor return line installed.

The fuel line is the long one that comes from the bottom of the firewall and loops up to the middle of the engine. The return line comes out of the rear of the engine and attaches to the bulkhead fitting on the firewall.

The holes in the firewall for the aileron cables have already been drilled. So the next step is to route the cables and attach them to the aileron torque tube bellcrank. Mostly, it’s just mounting the cable attach mounts and bolting the rodends to the bellcrank.

Looking down and the bellcrank.

Here you can see the cables as they go outwards and turn towards the back.

From the engine side of the firewall on the co-pilot side

I’ve already created the elevator trim hardpoint and built the bracket. So now it’s time to mount the trim motor. Unfortunately, I miscalculated the bracket so I’ll have to build a new one. But the existing one will work for now.

The bracket when the trim actuator connects to the trim spring had to be drilled. Then it is attached to the trim actuator and spring.

Next, the other end of the spring get bolted to the clamp which goes on the elevator torque tube. Malcolm deviates from the factory method in how the spring is attached to the clamp. He likes to stagger the holes. I like his method so that’s what we did.

The question mark looking thing is the elevator trim spring. You can see at the bottom how it’s bolted to the clamp.

We held off on bolting the clamp to the torque tube until we could confirm some measurements. Once the clamp is bolted to the torque tube, it’s too late to turn back.

The installation of the Battery shelf (or tray) was listed early on in the build manual. But I’ve been putting it off hoping that a new, small, light-weight, high-tech battery would become available. There are tons of them in 12 volts, but they haven’t started making 24 volt versions yet.

So I took the supplied part and decided to improve it a bit. The factory part is just a flat piece with a bottom that fits the inside of the fuselage. I added a small “wall” around it. That way, if it ever decides to try and run away, it won’t fall into the landing gear and create more problems.

Unfortunately, my trip down was part business and I flew commercial so my phone was my only camera. But here’s the battery tray with the low wall around it.

Then the corners are cleaned up and a layer of BID inside and out.

The hole in the corner is to allow a slightly larger battery.

After running the brake lines, I remembered that I forgot the parking brake! It’s a little two piece valve that locks the fluid in the brake lines. First I had to determine where to mount the valve(s) and then make a pad. Then I just needed two screws to hold it in place.

When the lever (top) is towards the back, the brakes are locked. When it’s forward, the brake pedal are active. I couldn’t connect the brake lines yet because I don’t have 3/16″ elbows. But they’re on order.

I’m going to activate the valve by means of the rigid link from the valve to a simple lever mounted on the bottom edge of the instrument panel.

After the engine was installed we discovered that the upper cowling was hitting the engine in a couple of places.

This is the number 5 cylinder intake tube. It’s hard to see, but it is in contact with the inside of the upper cowling.

There is also contact on the number 6 cylinder intake tube and the main intake port.

Now there are three ways to fix this.
1) Lower the engine. I don’t like this approach. When installing the engine, the airframe is leveled, the engine is leveled and engine location is determined based on the location of the prop in the opening of the cowling. I could shim the top of the engine mount, but that would change the thrust vector. It would also require modifying the cowling to accommodate the new location of the prop.

2) Create “bumps” in the cowling. This is done fairly often. Especially when using non-standard engines or engines with turbo-chargers and intercoolers. The cowling mod can be done over a large enough area so that it’s not too unsightly, so I’m going to call this “plan B” for the intake tubes. It will, however be” plan A” for the main air intake.

3) Modify the intake tubes. This is a tricky approach. This engine has what is called a “balanced induction”. Which means (among other things) that all the intake tubes are the same length. One of the ways these tubes are modified is by cutting off the part that’s too high and welding a flat plate over it. I don’t like this method because you’re drastically reducing the size of the tube which means that you’ll be changing the volume of air that can get to the cylinder.

What I’m thinking of is to change the routing of the tube. By my calculations, the length of the tube will be about 3/4″ shorter after the modification. That makes it “plan A”.

The first step is to find someone who can do it. I searched and found a company that has made a whole set of tubes for a low-profile installation. But they haven’t made any for quite a while and they’re expensive.  After exchanging emails with them I got the impression that they weren’t very interested.

I trolled around the Lancair forums (they run the same engine) and had no luck there. Then I found out the company that made the low-profile tubes were done for the Venture Questair. This basically a propeller driven rocketship. Very small (2 people) and very fast (300 knots). So I started trolling the Questair forums. No luck there either.

Then something interesting happened. I decided to sell the small 2-1/4″ backup instruments I had got from Albert. I put them on Ebay and everything but the airspeed indicator sold (not many experimental aircraft need a 400kt airspeed indicator). But one of the bidders asked if I was interested in selling even though he didn’t meet the reserve. I decided to left him have it. Turns out he has a… Questair! I told him what I was trying to do and he put me in touch with a guy that’s done a few intake modifications.

So now I have to come up with a plan of attack. The first thing I did was to build a jig. I figure the guy doing the mod won’t have an engine handy and he’ll need to know if it’s going to fit.

This way he’ll be able to see if the tube ends will be in the correct location. Then I created a template that shows the shape (or outline) of the tube from two dimensions. You can see where I’ve already done that on the picture above.

Next, using the side view I identified where the cowling was and determined where to make the cuts.

This will lower the profile so it doesn’t hit the cowling. A straight piece will then be added to compensate for the loss of run length.

To test this, I need to build a mock up of the intake tube. So I got some 1-1/2″ PVC and built a duplicate tube.

Then marked the locations of the cuts.

Made the cuts.

Cleaned up the ends and attached.

Then I made a cut on the straight portion and added a piece about 1-3/16″ long.

The final product.

On the jig.

And this is the number 6 cylinder intake tube and the PVC mock-up.

The ends align and based on measurements, it should clear the cowling, cylinders and other hardware on the engine. But the only way to know for sure is to send it down to Malcolm and see how looks in the engine.