Oil cooler mounted

I mounted the oil cooler... on the firewall. There wasn't enough room (that I could see) to mount on the baffle. I had the firewall mount kit from Van's. It was pretty straight forward. I ended up rerouting that left oil line away from the fuel line so it wasn't rubbing.



Note: Everyone tells me that the little box on top of the oil cooler that Van's supplies is poorly designed and won't cool the oil enough. I'm going to try it and see first. I will seal up all the gaps with RTV to improve air flow.

Starter/Alt wire runs

Here are a couple of shots how I ran the starter and alternator wires.

Probe wires and carb linkages

I finally just looped up the excess probe wire and zip-tied it together on the left side.



Installed the real washer/nuts on the throttle and mixture control cables at the carb.

The Craig Catto Propeller Story

I ordered my propeller from Craig Catto on January 19th, 2005. This purchase was a switch from using the Sensenich prop I was planning on, Mel Asberry gave rave reviews of Craig's props. Craig said the lead time was 16 weeks, which would put the prop in my hands at the end of May. (Incidentally, the lead time from Van's on a Sensenich was also 16 weeks.)

On March 29th (my birthday), he replied to an email I sent saying he was 2 weeks behind schedule. So that put me to early/middle June. On July 5th, weeks after my prop should have arrived, I emailed Craig and said he could push me off until the end of September. At that point I was trying to pay for an engine and really didn't have the $$ to pay for the prop and I knew it would help Craig out some. (The prop still didn't arrive when it should have.)

On October 11th, he sent me an email saying "I have put your order in line for delivery by the end of the month or the first week of November.". On November 23rd a reply to a status check email, said he was waiting on the color matched paint.

Finally on December 15th I got an email from Craig saying the prop had shipped. He has easked me earlier where I wanted it shipped and a phone number, I replied saying I wanted it sent to my work address as I figured it would require a signature and we are never home during the day. After his email that the prop was shipped, I was bummed since I thought it would go to my work address on Saturday. Guess who pulled up in my driveway on Saturday? Special delivery postman with a funny shaped box. Guess Craig didn't get my email, which worked out good.

Conclusion: The prop does look nice. I haven't flown behind it yet, so I can't speak to its performance. However, I'm a bit dissapointed that it took almost 11 months to the day to get and it required consistent hounding on my part. (I DID give him a 3 month reprieve, so let's say 8 months to get.) Fortunatly it wasn't keeping me from flying. I think Craig needs to seriously look at his customer service and to be honest with his customers. He IS a nice guy and I swapped several personal emails with him.

Today, I got a voicemail from him checking in. First call I think I ever got from him. :-)

EGT/CHT Probe wires

I drilled holes in the exhaust tubes for the EGT probes and attached the CHT probes. I wired up the right side probes to the EIS. The left side wires have a lot of excess probe wire I'm trying to figure out what to do with.

Prop status and christmas party

Looks like my prop might ship this week.. FINALLY! Craig says the hold up has been the paint color matching. I sent him paint chips a month ago to match with. I wanted the tip colors to match the colors we plan on painting the airplane. It should look great since I had him paint two different colors on the tips in his new style.

Last night was our annual EAA 868 Christmas party... a good time for all.. good food and lots of door prizes.

The temperature here in KS is now way south of freezing.. high today is 18, getting down to 4 (four!) tonight. I've decided to move to the airport sooner rather than later since I'll have a semi-heated hangar to work in. There may not be much progress to report this week.

Exhaust system, starter and stuff...

(NOTE: Since I'm posting in so many different areas, I'm going to start listing the current posts on the main page to make the most recent easy to find.)

The exhaust system arrived on Saturday so I spent most of today installing it and the associated heat muff and warm air doo-dad.

The exhaust itself was about the easiest thing to install! I had to trim 1" off of two pieces and then just bolted it on! Everything lined up nicely. I think I had it bolted up in less than an hour.





I skipped over to installing the cabin heat muff on the right hand side and also fitted the tube that feeds warm air to the carb if needed. Both were very simple to install. The warm air tube required some filing to get a good fit.



While in town for breakfast earlier, I picked up a Gates 7360 alternator belt... tried to install it but it was too short. Went back, got a 7385, it was too long, back again and got a 7375 and it was too long! Ugh.

I bolted on the starter at one point only to discover you can't install the alt. belt with it on. :-) So back off it came.

Getting back to the exhaust system, I put the lower cowl on so I could position the pipes to clear the cowl and then took it back off.

I installed all the exhaust hangar components. Instructions are a bit unclear but finally figured it out. It was tough sitting on a cold concrete floor and dealing with tiny little nuts. I didn't take pictures of it but I will.

Back to baffles

My plenum arrived earlier this week so I'm back to working on the baffles. I screwed all the pieces in place and played with the plenum. Sam James provides templates for all the baffle pieces to make your own, but I opted for Van's kit to make it easier. I did some major trimming on Van's side pieces using the templates that Sam provides. I started to get the plenum positioned. It is going to require some trimming at the front to clear some protrusions on engine case. I managed to break off my cutting wheel so I had to call it quits for the evening.