Engine Baffles

	16 Nov 2007	Today was Day Five and I'm pretty much done with baffles, except for final tightening of the screws and bolts, and safety wiring the baffle ties on the bottom. From this view, note the j-stringers used to stiffen the back wall. Everything seems to have going back together nicely and I'm pleased with the results.
		And another view..
		And one more.
	15 Nov 2007	Today was Day Four and I manages to get about 75% of the baffle seals completed. After making the patterns, I found a silver Sharpie at the local craft store, then outlined the parts on the seal material. When all these are laid out, threre's not a whole lot left. I also found a leather punch which was useful for making the holes in the seal material.
		The front left was the first one I tried and it seems to have turned out OK. I'm not using the blind rivets because drilling those out at some time in the future is not going to be fun. Instead I ordered a bunch of #6 tinnerman washers, and had a bunch of of the AD4-4 universal soft rivets on hand. I think this turned out well.
		The aft left wasn't too much of a challenge....
		And this is pretty much where I left it today. I did install and safety wire the oil dip stick tube, then fitted these two quadrants. The aft left is ready for install, I just need to work the seals on the front right.
	14 Nov 2007	Day three of the push and the baffles are coming together. For all the work today, I didn't get many pictures. I cleaned and primed all the parts last night, then took the morning to rivet everything together. Overall, not too bad but I did have to drill out a couple rivets. Instead of 30 parts, I'm down to four. Next step is installing and cutting the seals. Hopefully, that's done tomorrow, but who knows. Today is 2 months since I started on these things.
	13 Nov 2007	Day two of the push to complete the baffles. Today was slightly interrupted for an MRI. I had a previous knee injury that has been giving my problems so the doc prescribed an MRI to figure out what was going on. So...25 minutes in the big tube listening to Jimmy Buffet while the giant magnet rearranged all the fields in my body. It's interesting that one of the check-in question is "are you a metal worker?"  Why "yes I am".. I guess they don't want a bunch of metal slivers trying to get sucked back out of your body while the thing is humming and thumping.  Well, I did get some RV stuff done. Here's the enclosure around the prop oil line. I'd been putting off some of the misc. stuff.
		Hummm, good opportunity for a learning experience. Here Alex, try this! Count one, two, three turns. I drilled holes, he deburred. And did a pretty good job helping dad!
		Even for the baffle kit, this is way under estimated. There a a whole bunch of parts to this baffling thing. The good part is that all this starts going together tomorrow.
	12 Nov 2007	A major project at work is finally live and I'm taking some time off. This week is a major push to get the baffles done and as much as I can on the the engine. I'm not sure how far I'm going to get but we're going to make serious progress.  I ordered another aft left baffle because I didn't like the cooler sitting as low as it was. With the new baffle, I was able to raise it about an inch. You can also see the stiffener on the left aft side baffle. All in all. it's getting there.
		A nice thing about having a new panel fabbed, was being able to use the old panel for various parts/ brackets. Here, I've used a couple sections of the old .063 panel to build the box and allow the baffle seal a straight shot across the back of the baffles. On the aft side, it's tied into the oil cooler double plate.
		Here's the aft left baffles. I used some old j-stringer to add a stiffener across back of the baffle, and added some .063 doubbler to carry some stress from the .25 bolt hole, which mounts to the engine, over to the cooler baffle. Hopefully, this is enough to stiffen that whole area.
	3 Nov 2007	The baffles continue to move along. The task for the day was to start fitting the oil cooler and associated mounting reinforcement. Not too difficult, but just takes some time. I wanted this as high as possible, and took into consideration the baffle seal. through 20-20 hindsight, I could have cut the hole about an inch higher. The local guys here in Seattle don't report high temps so I'll deep this as-is for now. If it's a problem, I'll add a standoff to the mount to get some additional airflow to the oil cooler.
		And here's the front view.
	29 Oct 2007	The front baffle went fairly well and I pretty much finished riveting the tabs to the baffle. The plans have you use dome head rivets, but I decided to dimple where I can and use flush rivets. #1, it's got to smooth out airflow (OK, probably not by much), and #2, the dimples interlock, keeping the parts from wearing on each other.
		Here's the front right floor. Seems to have generally come out well, but the right outboard side is a little high. I may need to figure that out. There's still a little trimming to do on the forward bulkhead baffle.
		Next step was to trim the baffles. I read about this trick on the web somewhere. Basically you suspend the cowl about 4 or 5 inches above the lower cowl.
		Then use some sort of market, offset from the top cowl the same distance, to draw a line around the interior of the baffles.
		It took one good cut and the top cowl fit fairly well. The left aft corner needed a couple trims but at this point, the cowl top fits. I suspect my measurement on the market offset was off a bit as I ended up with a little more gap then I wanted at this point.
	20 Oct 2007	I had a pretty decent day continuing to work baffles. Man, this just seem to drag on but I think the end is getting closer. Today was the day to tackle the front right floor. First, bend the floor down a bit so it would fit under the cowl lip. It did take a fairly good bend. Next was the bend up along the front to make it fit the contour of the inlet. The angle in the corner took a while, but ended up making three of the little corner fittings before it fit well.
		After messing with the front right floor, the next thing to deal with was the front bulkhead baffle. This takes a bit of work and a lot of trimming to make it fit decent.
		And more trimming of the front b'head baffles.
		Looking at this, I realized that I'm not going to be able to drill the angles holding the front baffles to the floors without taking off the starter ring. Soooo, off it came.
	6 Oct 2007	I had hoped to get some forward progress on the baffles today since work has been all consuming lately with a major project getting close to go-live. First things first; after tracing the outline of the FAB duct, the cuts were made to open up the forward inlet floor for the filter. At this step you're just opening enough for the air duct.
		Next step was a lot of fitting for the filter mount flanges. Not too bad but I have some gaps that need a little pro-seal. These get pop-riveted to the fiberglass duct.
		OK, this seems to fit decent after riveting the filter mount flanges to the duct. So far, so good. Not real hard, just time consuming. Here the inlet floor is drilled and cleco'd to the duct flanges.
		And another shot. It's cheap.
		Finally, after the duct goes together, you open up the filter inlet hole so you can slide a filter in from the top. There wasn't a whole lot of trimming to do. One of the last things to do is trim the front of the inlet floor so you have just enough. I ended up taking off about 1/4 on the inboard side to make it parallel with the filter opening after putting a slight bend in the edge. Now, there was no way the cowl was going to go on without trimming the inlet a bit. Plans called for 3/8" between aft edge of the inlet and the baffle floor, but I kept it at 1/4" for now. So far it seems to fit.
	30 Sept 2007	After yesterday's frustrating session with this I feel like I made some decent progress. The bend was put back in the inlet floor as I just wasn't comfortable with the fit against the cowl inlet lip. With that done, and a much better baffle to cowl lip fit, I gradually cut/ sanded the FAB to fit the bottom of the inlet floor and I am generally happy with how that turned out. Yea, I know, I'll need to trim back the leading edge of the baffle floor a little as well as trim the lip on the cowl.
		This pic shows what I was going to be up against. With the bends in the baffle inlet floor, the surface plain for the filter is not level, so I was thinking of all sorts of ways to make this fit. I thought I was going to have to sand the FAB to a constant plain, but then I tried fitting the filter to the existing shape. Since the filter is rubber, it seems to easily bend to the contur of the FAB inlet. This is great news and means this is going to be a lot simpler than I thought.
	29 Sept 2007	I did get to spend some time on the baffles today and I'm note sure how much forward progress was really made. Here' the mount for the from ramp. Really not too difficult to fabricate once you figure out what's going on.
		It probably took the whole afternoon to get this worked out. Per the directions, the left side baffle should be just outside the inlet lip. Well, that's pretty easy. The trick is getting the ramp floor to mate with the lower lip of the inlet. I know that there's supposed to be a gap between the floor and the lip, but I'll deal with that in later trimming. The big problem that I can see is how to get the air filter to mount. It has a flat face and the baffle floor had a nice bend in it to meet the inlet lip. I flattened out the bend and I think it's going to look like @#$%. I suspect that the fix is to modify the air filter mount someway.
		The 2.5" wood disk is taped to the injector inlet so I can fit the air inlet duct.
		I don't have a good pic, but the inlet duct wouldn't sit flush with the face of the servo as it was interfering with the alternator and alternator mount bracket. Not good. The solution is to cut the hole in the duct, then I'll glass this back in with a depression to clear the alternator and mount. I'm not sure why I have this issue. It may be a function of the Precision and Superior engine, which may mount the servo a little higher than others. Who knows.
	23 Sept 2007	On Sunday we had the local EAA Chapter over for the annual BBA, so between the anniversary get-away and the BBQ, not much got done. I did manage to put this joggle in the left forward side baffle to get this interlocking to sit flush and it seemed to do OK.
		Messing around with the aft baffles, I did fab a .25 stand-off for the left inboard baffle. It seems to fit OK, but needs some tweaking.
	20 Sept 2007	It was the anniversary weekend so we got away for Thursday - Saturday over to the east side of the Cascades. I haven't been there before but it sure looked like Arizona, but a little cooler. We stayed at a newer resort called Cave B, and did drive over. Cave B is out in the middle of nowhere with no cell coverage. Accommodations are decent, but being a relatively new place, they still have some service issues to work out. Dave Parson's recent blog about crossing the Cascade Mountains (http://dualruddar.com)  talks about heading out from Renton, across the mountains over HWY 2, over to Lake Chelan, then stopping at Wenatchee for gas. Then down the Columbia river, and back across the mountains along I-90 in about an hour's worth of flying. I bet it took six hours of driving to do the same thing! I have got to get this airplane done.
	14 Sept 2007	I managed to start the baffles after getting the canopy on the fuselage. The biggest challenge is just understanding the instructions and drawings. Once you match that up with some of the info on the web, the picture gets a little less murky. All four quadrant sides needed some minor trimming to fit over the valve covers. Not too much but then again, I don't have the thick orange gaskets, only cork. More is going to be required with the rubber gaskets.
		After about an hour, I had these 4 parts temp fitted. Not a bad task but I did do some initial trimming on the forward parts to allow it to fit into the bottom cowl. The aft right fit almost out of the box, but the others needed a little trimming. Hopefully this moves along quickly.