2 Mar 08 6 Hours Total: 2782
Nelson got the inside of the canopy skirt painted while I worked on making baffle parts. I ordered the Aviator seats from Classic Aero. It will be 9-10 weeks before they arrive.
3 Mar 08 8 Hours Total: 2792
We made good progress on the baffles today. Most pieces are complete. One bracket must be remade and we'll do that tomorrow.
4 Mar 09 6 Hours Total: 2798
We got more work on the baffles done. Each of the baffles that curve under the cylinders along the fins needed a hardened point for attaching the safety wire that pulls them together so we used steel washers and drilled holes for the wires to pass through. We also added lips under two of the baffles to force air under the exhaust valve fins to aid cooling there.
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| The sides and back of the plenum are coming together. | The control cable for the prop governor has to come through the ramp. | The bracket at the back of the Plenum holds everything together. |
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UL-shows one of the "dams" made to direct air onto the exhaust valve fins. Also added a stiffener to remove a bow in the metal. UM-The right side has lots of screws and nutplates because I drilled too many early during construction. Oh well, it'll be strong. UR-shows the lower portion of the baffles where air exits after passing the cylinder cooling fins. The baffles are held together with safety wire which will be passed through a steel washer. |
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I'm going to make a divider to fit on the centerline of the engine to sto the crossflow of air from one side to the other. |  |
6 Mar 09 5
Hours Total: 2803
Nelson got the wingtips good shape and reprimed and they are ready for final assembly and installation on the wings.
7 Mar 09 2 Hours Total: 2805
We did some touchup painting on the canopy and the flood light shield. We removed all the tape and put the canopy back on the airplane. It looks great.
We got the high temp fiberglass resin today and the Classic Aero leather samples.
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Months of work is culminating as the canopy is finishing up. The trailing edge still doesn't fit tightly, so we'll add some weatherstripping there. |
The fit of the canopy into the windscreen frame turned out nice on both sides. |
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I planned the corners to all be square (vs rounded) and aligned with the edge of the slider canopy. |
An overview shot |
Neat shot looking through the canopy at the Pacer. |
10 Mar 09 3 Hours Total: 2808
We bought some lumber and Nelson built us an oven to cook the plenum fiberglass in. He got the oven finished and did some work on the hat shelf - filling pinholes and priming. We made a divider for the plenum using the new high temp resin and S glass.
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Left - the high temp resin and hardner. It must be weighed at a ratio of 100:16 to get the proper curing so a gram scale was necessary. The resin must be heated to the expected operational temperature in order to crosslink the molecules. Right - I made a piece to be used as the center divider for the plenum and cooked it in our house oven at 170 degrees for 2 hours and 225 degrees for 2 hours. During the heating process the resin turns red. |
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Below - The divider fits along the centerline of the engine to stop crossflow of incoming air from one side to the other. Some guys mounted cameras in their engine compartment, tufted it, and determined that the incoming air hits the back baffle crosses to the other side and then goes back out the air intake! This is my feeble attempt to control the air in the plenum. |
Below - The "oven" Nelson built for us to cook the plenum top. The plenum top is too large to fit in the house oven, so the resin manufacturer said we could made a wooden oven to raise the temp to 150F and then let the rest of the heat curing occur when the engine is running. We tested the oven to 200F, so we plan to cook at 150F for 2 hours and then at 200F for 2 hours. |
The divider has to fit over several things along the engine centerline and those holes can't be filled, however since the divider is double walled, most of the air leaks are minimized. The top of the divider will be cut down and the plenum top will be attached on top of it to become one piece. |
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11 Mar 09 8 Hours Total: 2816
We're in the lean forward mode to get the engine ready to run. We made good progress on the plenum today by making a mold on which to lay the fiberglass.
The plenum mold is drying tonight and we'll trim it and lay the plenum fiberglass top tomorrow. Then I have to cook it and trim it and add the glass for the intakes.
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I decided to make life simpler and use flat pieces of wood to make the plenum top. This is much easier than doing foam and shaping it. We carefully trimmed the Masonite to fit at the top of the side baffles and made a triangular centerpiece of particle board. Both were chosen because of inherent stiffness and smooth finishes. Everything was glued together with Gorilla Glue and wood braces added for strength. The 3 inch hole in the top is to make a bubble for the fuel purge valve. |  |
12 Mar 09 8 Hours Total: 2824
We made good progress on the plenum cover and the EGT and CHT probes. We got the initial layup for the plenum cover done and Nelson got the EGT and CHT probes wired and started on installation of the P Mags. I bought automotive spark plugs (NGK BR8ES) from ACS and the spark plug adapters from EMagAir. We'll be rewiring the ignition harness to use the auto plugs.
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The plenum mold after rounding the edges and final sanding to fit. |
Showing the wood braces added for strength. |
I couldn't find anything of the right size to make the bubble so I used the packaging from a floodlight (the bulb was too small for the hole) and added tape over it. It's a bit sloppy, but should be acceptable. |
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Then we put clear tape over the entire mold. |
The is the initial 3 layers of S glass with high temp resin. I ran out of S glass, so I'll add two more layers of Bid glass and top it all with a layer of carbon fiber. |
The EGT and CHT wiring is coming along very nicely. We'll add a nutplate to tie together the forward and aft baffle and use it as a place to secure the wiring. |
13 Mar 09 10 Hours Total: 2834
We got lots done today. The P Mags are reinstalled and the manifold pressure hoses to them are run except for the T needed to tie into the original MP line. The EGT and CHT wires are complete and awaiting final clamping - to be done when the baffles are complete. Nelson made a passthrough for the vent from the engine-driven fuel pump. The plenum top is trimmed to fit and it slipped right into position. We added brackets to the cooling air intake ramps to strengthen them and hold them tight to the cowling. I decided to make the air intakes using shaped foam and I got a good start on those. I'd hoped to be ready to cook the plenum today, but no way. I'm going to have to hustle to get it ready for heat treating in another 3 days.
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Plenum top after curing overnight and trimming. The resin guys said to do any tooling after heat treating, but I had no choice in this case. |
A shot from the back shows the notched part of the baffle behind cylinder 4. Most builders put their oil cooler on the back of that notch. The bubble for the purge valve turned out okay. It will look better when more glass is added. |
The intake ramps are essentially complete now. We added brackets to the outboard edges to add strength and hold the ramp in the desired position. |
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To make the molds for the intakes I started with blocks of foam glued together. I forgot to take a photo, but here they are after some trimming. |
To shape the foam, I gradually remove the foam that doesn't look like an intake. I'm using knives, Permagrit tools, files, drum sanders, a belt sander, and hand sanding to shape them. When finished, I'll drape glass over them right on the engine. |
Very neat installation of the engine-driven fuel pump vent. Should the fuel pump diaphragm break the vent will safely dump the fuel overboard. |
15 Mar 09 9 Hours Total: 2843
Frustrating day today. Got into shaping the inlet foam and tried the top cowling only to discover that it didn't fit with the fiberglass plenum in place. Can't believe I didn't try the cowling before laying the glass! So, I had to modify the glass - which took all day. Nelson got several things done though. He got a good head start on reinstalling the intercom and SL-30. We need to make sure those are working before we proceed with installing the rest of the panel because the intercom will be difficult to reach later.
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Left - the modified plenum top. The Van's top cowling is much tighter on the top of the engine than I thought. So, I had to cut V's so it wouldn't rub. Also had to cut the bubble down. The metal baffle on the sides was also touching and required trimming. It'll all turn out better anyway.
Right - Tonight's shuttle launch as seen from the front yard. |
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16 Mar 09 9 Hours Total: 2852
Another day of frustration. Nelson installed the intercom and the SL30. The intercom works and we're getting audio from the AOA, but cannot get the PTT to work and cannot receive transmissions on the SL30. Lots of time studying the problem.
I continued work on modifying the plenum. I strengthened the side lips that will mount the nutplates and added some resin to the modified "bubble." That setup all day and, after trimming, the plenum top fit nicely. I need to finish shaping the foam for the intakes so I can lay fiberglass to form the intakes.
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17 Mar 09 10 Hours Total: 2862
One mystery solved today. We borrowed another guys SL30, slid it into my rack, and everything worked perfectly. So, the problem lies with my radio. I called Stein at SteinAir and he gave me the shipping info for Garmin. It's on Fedex and hopefully they will turn it around quickly. But all of that came after literally hundreds of hours of troubleshooting because we assumed we had made a mistake in the wiring. Nelson and I have checked every wire and rewired, and checked them again. Very frustrating.
Got the intake foam more refined, but more yet to do. My goal to finish the plenum by tomorrow is shot. I'll stay after it until it's finished.
18 Mar 09 9 Hours Total: 2871
Nelson got several things done today while I worked on the plenum. He got the panel flood lights wired and the baggage door rain trough sealed. We had a small place where the windscreen fiberglass had bubbled up and he repaired that.
The intake foam is finally shaped and the plenum top is drilled and clecoed in place. Next I'll lay on fiberglass and then we'll be ready to heat treat it.
Tomorrow we plan to test the fuel tanks and hang the wings. Should take at least a full day.
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The plenum top is drilled to fit. |
It's somewhat ugly right now, but beauty is in the eye of the beholder. The air flowing through to cool the engine is going the see this as a beauty. |
We've swapped the hangar around and put the Pacer to the rear so we can install the wings on the RV. |
19 Mar 09 10 Hours Total: 2881
Long day today. We hung the left wing. I guess if I could get it airborne, I could do continuous right rolls.
20 Mar 09 8 Hours Total: 2889
The wings are on for the last time. And what a task it was!
The difficulty of installing the main spar bolts caused be the main landing gear weldments is Van's revenge for pilots choosing a nosewheel RV. Getting the bolts through the weldment (it doesn't align) and then getting the nuts on the bolts (they're hidden behind the main gear weldments) took hours. When torqueing the bolts, we sometimes had to use the torque wrench on the bolt head, so we had to first measure the resistance of the bolt turning in the hole and add that to the torque used when only torqueing the nut. Using AC 43-13 as our guide, we torqued the 7/16 bolts to 480 inch pounds (40 ft-lbs) (plus adjustment if needed) and the 1/4 bolts to 60 inch pounds. The torque for the rear spar bolt is ranged from 100-140 inch pounds and since it is a drilled bolt with castellated nut, we torqued to the low end of the range and increased toward the high end as needed to align the hole for the cotter pin.
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| The wings are on. I could not have done this job without my brother Nelson's expert help. We work together very well and I truly appreciate his help. | It looks ready to launch right out of the hangar. I'm sure she's thinking, "Get this done so we can go flying!" | The wings are rock solid on the plane. A nice solid feel to the whole airplane. |
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| Van is a sadistic man. Why else would he design the RV-8A with such hard to reach locations for the main wing attachment bolts. | It literally took hours to get the bolts in and the nuts started on them. | Once the nuts were started, getting a wrench in to hole them while torquing was also difficult. I have to retorque these bolts after 100 hours. |
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| The aft side of the spar is reachable, but it is impossible to insert the bottom bolts from the front side. So the top ones are front to back and the bottom ones are back to front. | Except on the right side where it was impossible to get the upper 1/4 inch bolts in from the front. | The front attachment is a drilled head bolt into a nutplate and the bolt is safety wired. |
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The rear spar bolts, which were drilled to set the angle of incidence two years ago, installed easily and are in for the last time. |  |
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| Gotta remember to install the rear seat fresh air duct. It would be more difficult after the wing is on. | Our preplanned fuel lines matched up very well. | The left tank connection along with the Princeton fuel probe and wiring. The lower aluminum tube is the brake line. |
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| You also have to string the wires while installing the wings. | This is a handy tool Nelson made for us. Used a hardware store bolt and drilled it to accept a dimple die. | We've used is a number of times. Here it was useful to dimple in a tight spot. Just back up one with a bucking bar and rap the other one with a hammer about 3-4 times. |
21 Mar 09 9 Hours Total: 2898
We got the plenum intake fiberglass laid. I've decided to make separate intakes and then glass together with the plenum top and then heat treat the entire part. It's sure taking longer than I expected.
Got lots of other things done. There is a row of screws attaching the fuselage skin to the wing skin and those are in. Nelson got the final rivets holding the flap hinge on done. He fitted the fuel tank drains and we'll Proseal the fairings on them later. I ordered another transponder antenna from ACS - we broke off the first one. All of the fuel lines from the tanks to the fuselage fit nicely. We worked on fastening together all of the interior fuel lines but had a stumbling block. Last year we had removed the Andair fuel selector fittings and failed to put them back on, so now we're searching for the screws to fit.
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Left - the fuel lines fit very nicely.
Right - the row of screws tying together the wing skin and the fuselage skin. |
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Left - The Princeton Electronics fuel level
sensor is a capacitance type.
Right - The left wing tank vent connections. |
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Left - the engine was completely covered with
plastic and everything taped off to catch stray resin. Still some
managed to get on the engine. I'll have to remove it before running
the engine.
Right - the intake molds. |
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22 Mar 09 9 Hours Total: 2907
Laid a layer of glass over the entire plenum and intakes today. Had to remove the intakes from their molds and trim and fit them and then glassed them in place with the plenum top. Only did one layer of glass and I'll add more off the airplane. That will allow me to clean up the engine and do close fitting with the plenum and then lay on two more layers of glass. Nelson worked all day bent over in the cockpit. Connecting the fuel lines and putting on adel clamps is cramped work. We've got the fuel lines all connected so we'll do a fuel system test in a few days.
We're starting the wing wiring now and realized we had not pulled the pitot wire through the conduit hole cut for it, so we spent an hour fishing the wire. A simple mistake that cost lots of extra work.
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Left - the intake molds have been mated to
the plenum top and glass laid to combined the two.
Right - the plenum top with intakes has most of the trimming done. The different types of cloth produced different colors. The top is made of S glass and it is a tan color while the intakes were made with bid glass and are greenish. |
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23 Mar 09 6 Hours Total: 2913
Things are moving so fast now I can hardly keep up with the changes. All of the parts we've made over the past few years are now rapidly going back on the plane for the final time. I want to document everything so I can review the photos if necessary when doing maintenance on the RV.
We're planning to test the fuel system a week from today. We'll need the AF-3400 engine monitor installed and the electrical system up and operating. We have to calibrate the fuel sensors and we'll run the fuel pump to check operation and to check for leaks.
Trimmed the plenum top and I'll trim it more in a couple of days and then lay another two layers of glass on it before heat treating and final trimming.
Nelson got the main wheel pants installed and safety wired. He discovered a flaw in the fiberglass we laid around the windscreen, so now we're removing part of the glass to see how far the flaw extends. We'll get it repaired this week.
Installed the OAT for the AF-3400 in the RCP fresh air NACA vent under the right wing.
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| The lower end of the leg fairing must be safetied before installing the pants. | After the aft pant is installed the retention bolt must also be safetied. | An overall shot with the aft pant installed. |
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| Above shows the left pant safety wire. | Closeup showing the fit of the pants to the leg fairing. | The main pants are on for the first flight. |
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The OAT probe for the AF-3400 engine monitor
is installed in the right wing bottom side NACA vent.
To right shows the wiring inside the wing. |
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24 Mar 09 2 Hours Total: 2915
Removed the loose fiberglass around the windscreen and filled it with micro slurry.
25 Mar 09 8 Hours Total: 2923
Trimmed the plenum top and added glass to weak spots. Sanded down the fiberglass repairs on the windscreen and painted with fill primer. Did the wire connections for the fuel probes. Installed the pitot tube and connected heater wiring and pitot tubing. The new transponder antenna arrived and it is installed. Also got the headphone jacks reinstalled. Tomorrow we'll solder the 8 gauge wire that pulled loose when we were inserting the wing bolts.
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| The pitot tube is installed for the final time. | These are the pitot connections and heater wire connections for the pitot tube. | The new transponder antenna installed. |
26 Mar 09 8 Hours Total: 2931
Lots more detail work today. The final layer of fiberglass went on the plenum and tomorrow I'll glass the inside to smooth the air flow and then it'll be time for heat treating.
We got the #8 wire recrimped and attached. It was the power for the left switch panel bus.
Redid the pitot tube wiring to make it neater and easier to secure. It's a good thing we changed the pitot heat wiring because the connector had cracked and would have fallen apart later.
Installed the aileron push-pull tubes to the wing turnbuckle. We'll add the remainder to the ailerons when we hang them.
Added some clamps to the cockpit fuel lines to reduce vibration and movement.
27 Mar 09 10 Hours Total: 2941
Well, a number of things completed today. Cut holes in the baffles for passthrough of several cables and the ignition wires. Added some stainless passthroughs to the firewall. Rerouted some cables and hoses to avoid interference among them. Cooked the plenum top in the homemade oven. We were able to get 270 degrees F in the wooden oven and the plenum top turned bright red as the resin cured. Nelson got the rudder pedals connected. We'll put the floors in in a couple of days. That will make working in the cockpit easier because now we're having to carefully balance on the under floor ribs whenever we're working in the cockpit. On Sunday I'll rewire the ignition wires for auto plugs and trim the plenum and add the nutplates for its final installation. Then we'll pressure test the fuel system for leaks. After that, we plan to motor the engine without upper plugs to circulate oil. Who knows, maybe an engine run in a week or so.
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| The purge valve is connected but we discovered an interference problem between the rod end bearing bolt and the fuel injector line. So, we'll likely order a forked connector to replace the rod end. | The ram air cable was connected and adjusted. We'll bend over the end of the wire to ensure it cannot slip out of the attachment. | The is the oven Nelson built to heat sure the plenum resin. We expected to get about 200 degrees F in the oven. |
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| We used a heat gun on a low setting to blow hot air into the wooden oven. Only the inside of the top had any reflective or insulating material and it had kitchen aluminum foil. | The oven reached an impressive 270 degrees F - easily enough to heat sure the part. | A chemical in the high temp resin turns red during heat curing. It's ugly at this point, but after trimming it will look better. And I'm considering painting it inside and out. |
29 Mar 09 6 Hours Total: 2947
Tightening hoses and fittings that had been left loose earlier. Making sure everything is tightened and ready to go. We have all of the holes cut in the baffle for hoses and controls to pass through. We still have to located and cut the holes for the cooling outlets for mags, fuel pump and alternator and for the lower FCP fresh air. We trimmed the plenum top and did some fitting. Boy - is it ever ugly. I'm going to do significant sanding and I'll paint it to get rid of the uglies. |
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30 Mar 09 10 Hours Total: 2957
The plenum is still ugly, but it fitted and nutplates attached. I still have lots more work to do on it including sanding and painting, but it is suitable now for an engine run
We routed some of the ignition wires and got them clamped in place.
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| The plenum is still butt-ugly, but functional. | The plenum is nutplated and ready to install. The ignition harness for the upper plugs is almost done. | I'm using automotive spark plugs which need an adapter to fit. They cost 10% of the price of aircraft plugs and they perform better and last longer. |
31 Mar 09 10 Hours Total: 2967
Long day today. We started out with finishing up the ignition harness and got the wires routed and was ready to change over the spark plug ends to the automotive type only to discover that E Mag sent the coil end of the wire. So a phone call to Brad got a correct set on the way - but we now wait to finish the harness.
So, we switched to calibrating the fuel tank sensors. The original plan was to fill up each tank setting the calibration as we filled them. Well, it was a good plan. I forgot that I had bought the 5 set point fuel probes instead of the 2 point ones. We attempted the 2 set point calibration with frustration before figuring out the error.
As we filled the right tank, a significant fuel leak began running down the right gear leg. We found two connections on the fuel purge line that were loose. Nelson and I had both gone over the lines and still missed them! Well, that's part of the reason we were testing everything. We decided to go back to the hangar with one full tank and one near empty. That turned out to be a good plan because we were able to transfer fuel back and forth between the tanks to calibrate each one. I'm still not convinced of the accuracy of the calibration, but I can redo it at any time.
The repaired radio came back from Garmin so we slid it in and tested it with the Pacer but found it is not working correctly. Later I thought about it and realized the antennae on both airplanes were blocked from one another. So, we'll try it again tomorrow with one on the ramp.
