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Firewall Forward, Page 2 |
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This picture shows the crankcase breather tube plumbed into the center of the 4-into-1 collector. This will create a vacuum in the crankcase, which is supposed to help seat the rings. Also, blow-by oil will be burned in the exhaust stream, rather than deposited on the belly. Also visible is the cable bracket I made for the mixture cable. With the unique servo mounting, I had to fabricate brackets for both mixture and throttle, and order custom cables. |
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The following pictures show the installation of the Sam James fiberglass plenum top, with my own design sides, bottoms, and oil cooler mounting. I have used 2700 series camlocks to attach the top piece, for easy access. Click on a thumbnail for a full size picture.
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I am now (5/19/02) finished with the firewall forward except for 2 oil cooler hoses, and some exhaust heat shields.
Air Intake System has moved to a new page of it's own.
Here are a couple of shots of the finished firewall forward (10/4/03). The observant builder will notice I have new side plates for the baffles. The originals were one piece on each side, and they each cracked in two places. I didn't believe it, but the cylinders do move relative to each other.
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A couple more, after the installation of dual Lightspeed ignition modules. Yes, I installed them on the firewall (sorry, Klaus).
Due to the extreme exhaust noise, I have modified the megaphone exhaust outlet.
This made a very big reduction in noise level, I think about 10 dB. It caused no discernable difference in performance.
Oil Cooler
I have been asked for more detail about the oil cooler installation. I built it this way from the beginning. I was worried about the many reports of cracking oil cooler mounts, so I followed the old engineering axiom..."When in doubt, make it stout".
This is a Stewart Warner 8432R oil cooler. I have flown 375 hours at this writing (Nov., 2006) with no problems, including several low altitude races, and one extreme vibration event when I lost the leading edge of my composite prop (story), without any cracking of the mount.
I used a piece of 3/16" aluminum to wrap around the motor mount and bolt to the rear of the engine. A piece of 1/8" is used to mount the cooler just aft of the cylinder. Some pieces of angle tie it together, bolting to the engine where possible.