Getting legs

I finally got to the point where I was far enough to get the plane up onto the table in order to get the gear under it. I have been putting this off because of the order in which I needed things done. The first thing that I wanted to do was get the engine. With the engine I was able to check to see if the engine mount interfered with the engine sump. I wanted to do this while the mount was not on the plane so I could weld with everything on the table.


The mount was touching the sump screen, so I decided to lower it just like the BPE setup. In fact, I just ordered the bent pipe from Rhonda at BPE



 Everything fit-up right before TIG welding everything in place. With the engine mount modification complete I was able to paint everything and re-install the mount. The mount is a good lifting point to attach the engine hoist to. In total, I had 3 points to lift the plane and this was solid enough that I ended up doing this by myself (not recommended). On the back of the plane I put the tail on a step stool. In the middle of the plane at just aft of the baggage door I put a 4-inch strap connected to the garage rafters via heavy duty ratchet straps. On the front of the plane I used the engine hoist connected to some 48-inch (double arm length) runners. On top of that I put one more strap mid-fuselage for a fail-safe.

Low-Profile Door Handles

Yesterday I started the install on the low profile door handles that I ordered from aerosport products. A couple of weeks ago I started work on the vans hardware that is integrated into the low profile handle. Everything was pretty straight forward, but I did run into a problem when I tried fitting the gears to the main cylinders. The major issue was that they did not fit. I chucked up the main gear as well as the cylinder and hit them with emory cloth, but that was not good enough as when I put them on the arbor press I had a feeling I was never going to get them off. Additionally, the cylinder has a roll pin that needs to go through it as well as the gear. If these things are too tight, well, good luck...

Unfortunately I do not have a lathe (not yet!). I do however have a mill, and a boring head setup. I put some spare 3/4" aluminum into the vice and bored a hole (half way through the plate) slightly larger than the cylinder. This allowed me to put a wrap of electrical tape around the cylinder so I did not destroy it.



From there, I locked the bed into place to save the center point and then dialed the boring head to just scratch the interior dimension of the handle cylinder. I was able to take off a couple of thousands at a time until I got a nice snug fit between the door cylinder and the gear.


Done!

Door Strut: Making a drill guide

The aftermarket door strut brackets that accept the McMaster seals are really well designed and look great, however they have a lot of angles to deal with during the installation. Additionally, the cabin top also have a lot of fillets to work around. If those angles are not followed exactly, you will never get the screws to line up unless you oversize the holes. To aid in this task I decided to make a (2 time use) drill guide to get all of the holes in alignment. I say 2-time use, because I did not have the patience to wait for mcmaster to send me a tool hardened drill guide so I sacrificed a #10 screw to make a set of #40 pilot holes in the cabin top.

Getting the bracket and screw in alignment.
 


Taking off the screw head and finding the screw center.



Putting a #41 hole through the center.


Thankfully everything was tramed and came out center.


Drill guide in use.


Don't mind the positioning of the actual bracket, there is still some fiberglass to take off of the edge.

Beringer brake assembly

Today was a cold rainy day, so Mackenzie and I sat by the fire and assembled the Beringer brakes.



Everything went together as expected with the exception of a part number labeled AV-VANS-016. This appears to be a wheel fairing bracket spacer, but it was neither in the install instructions nor does it appear to fit anywhere logical. It is the same height as the standard spacers but the spacers do not step down in hole size in order to accept the caliper assembly the way that the AV-VANS-013A spacers do (leaving a lot of play in the caliper to AN-4 bolt).

*Edit: There are new assembly instructions on the web, which call out the usage of AV-VANS-016 rather than AV-VANS-013A. I have to give them a call on this one. The AV-VANS-016 look good, and are I am guessing the preferred install as they give more support to the wheel fairing (a known problem). However, the AV-VANS-013 have a turn down on them adapt the caliper hole size to the AN-4 hardware. 

Engine Arrival

I owe so many posts that still need to be edited, but this one is quick and easy. The Engine is here! I ended up going with a Thunderbolt. They were a dream to work with. I will post more as I get it opened and mounted.

Firewall Passthroughs

With the engine delivery nearing, I need to stop messing around and get my firewall ready! My punch list has a bunch of open things on it to include:

• Lavashield heat barrier
• Oil Cooler bracket
• Control Cable pass-throughs
• Power Cable pass-through
• Universal Pass-through
• Engine mount

I was able to knock off two of those things today, I started with the power cable passthrough. I purchased a firewall pass-through from summit racing a couple months ago and it was finally time to install it.



I used the stock location, but if I were to do this again I would use the factory hole, but push the location up and to the pilots right a bit. There is a doubler in this location, and while I was able to avoid running into it, I will have to fab a washer for the interior so the nut it sits flush. I drilled this to about 3/4 of an inch, then pulled out a carbide burr to take care of the rest. Yes, those are straight sides as that is the anti-rotation design from the pass-through.

I was also able to take care of my cable control pass throughs. Like the power connector, I purchased some eyeball passthroughs a couple of months ago. In all honesty, I have been putting off installing them because I was not sure how I wanted to lay them out. I finally decided to just put them in because it would be a complete pain to do this later.



There are three holes by default. I split the difference on the two left holes and these holes disappeared after I drilled the 1 1/8 hole for the eyeball.



That left the right hole off center but complete within the second eyeball cutout.





I placed the holes such that the backing plates were sided by side and touching. This was the decision point on where to put the third eyeball. I really wanted to put it to the right of the other two so that they were all on the same plane. If I were to do it again, I would probably do it that way. It looks like the control cables will all three line up nicely if you were to put them in the standard same plane configuration like the default setup. However, I was worried there there was some interference from something I needed to install in the future because every photo I have seen of an RV-10 firewall everyone seems to avoid the right mid part of this box...?



Yes, these plates are on backwards right now. These are not installed, I was just trying to find where to put the third passthrough. I ultimately decided on putting it lower than the previous two. It seemed to fit nicely in there. I guess I will find out when I go to install my control cables if this was a good idea or not ;) Hopefully I will remember to come back and update this post when I get that far.







I wanted to keep this paper in my files, but I was too lazy to walk it inside, and too impatient to have it just laying around. So I will archive it here for later.

Fathers day

I forgot to post this the other month. This was from fathers day. My dad helping me do the finishing kit inventory!