Month: October 2017

Hung the Engine!

GeorgeLeave a comment

Yesterday I hit a huge milestone. After many weeks of prep for this moment, I have officially installed my first airplane engine! It was more difficult than I thought, but everything lined up great once I figured out the technique. 

First a huge thank you to my uncle for helping me out, definitely needed his strength and even one of his tools.

We began by repositioning the plane into the shade, and I propped the tail up on one of my saw horses to bring the nose down a bit. 

We then hoisted the engine and rolled it to the plane. 

It was a bit nerve wracking, but the hoist was pretty stable.  

The alignment process was quite tricky, and getting even one of the bolts to align took some wiggling and repositioning. 

With a dynafocal type 1 Mount, the bolts converge on the CG of the engine when tightened. This made it difficult to align everything initially until we tightened everything down. 


Removing the hoist and letting it hang was one of the coolest things ever! 


I got everything back into the garage and will begin installing some of the engine instrumentation and continue moving forward! 

Hung the Engine!

Engine work

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Today I spent a few hours cleaning the shop and installing some fittings on the engine. My goal is to hang the engine next weekend. 

I started by rotating the prop governor and installed the cable bracket. 

I cut the safety wire on the six screws holding the governor so that I could rotate the lever arm. I then installed the cable bracket in white and reinstalled the screws and re-safety wired them. 

I needed to install the oil cooler fittings, but that requires removing the right p-mag. Once off I could easily screw the fitting in. 

This is the fitting installed and with tape over it to keep moisture out. You can see how tight it is to get a wrench on there. 

The other oil fitting is much easier. 

The fitting (with tape over it) is right above the left p-mag and just under the oil breather tube (with the red cap). 

I also installed the fuel pump outlet and fitting for the fuel pressure. 

Fuel will come out the bottom port and go to the fuel servo near the front of the engine. 

I also installed the oil pressure fitting


And the manifold pressure fitting from the number 3 cylinder. 

You can see it here wrapped in tape just above the oil return line. 

I finally installed the fuel overflow fitting to the fuel pump. 

There are a few more things to install, but that can be done after the engine is hung. There are a few more holes I need to drill in the firewall for cables and wires, but that’s no more than an hour of work, and I’m hoping to get it done some time this week. 

Engine work