The engine I found from a Barnstormers ad. A guy down in San Jose had acquired a Velocity project from Florida. The engine was sort of a mutt. It was rebuilt by Barrett and only had 150 SMOH, but that was almost 20 years prior. It was pretty corroded inside. The cylinders were trash, so was the cam. The cases, most of the accessory case, crankshaft, and connecting rods were all good. It had a B&C starter on it, so that was nice.
We fit it as-is to the plane, so we could get the cowls set up properly.
Once that was all done I tore the engine apart.
The accessory case was not bad, but most of the gears needed to be refurbished or replaced.
The sump was clean.
Everything went to Lycon to be repaired, replaced, or fixed. It took a long time. Way longer than they said. In the end I decided to not have them actually reassemble the engine. I did it myself, using the Overhaul manual, and the head A&P from the flying club watching me.
Everything was laid out and organized.
This damned thing is the plug for the prop governor that I am not using. It is not supposed to look like that. It should be another ~1/2" in. Guess what, I get to split the cases, AGAIN!
The firewall was done in stainless steel, not aluminum per plans. Aluminum burns through WAY too fast.
Here's another time hole. I wanted a nice inlet for the fuel injection servo. I designed it up in SolidWorks, and machined it on the Tormach at TechShop. I made two, and gave one to Tim Andres.
I ended up buying a beautiful carbon prepreg spinner form James Redmon. This thing is gorgeous. I just have to flip a coin to see which of my two kids doesn't go to college.
Baffles. Don't get me started. I tried to do this the right way. I got the baffle CAD drawings form the guys that waterjet cut the Berkut baffles. Then I printed them out, glued them to card stock, and fitted them. I made modifications, and sent them back to the water jet guys. They dutifully cut up the non-modified parts, so then I had a full set of beautiful baffles that did not fit my plane.
That right there is the rear baffle. I have two just like it, with some screwup somewhere. Isn't life fun?
Here is a trick I shamelessly stole from Jim Price and some of the Formula 1 racers. The actual cylinder head baffles are high temperature RTV and fiberglass BID sandwiches. You roll them out, then stick them in place. They come out really nice.
A big thansk to Tim Andres for the loan of the prop balancer. It worked great.
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