August 6, 2020
Installed the engine mount. Started in the upper passenger side and opened the hole up to 3/8. We stepped up in drill bit sizes, then used a ream for final size. Once the first bolt was installed, we hung the mount and used the other mount positions as a drill guide to enlarge the other holes. All of them lined up well enough except the lower pilot side hole. The original hole was off enough that even after enlarging everything up to final size, there was still a little bit of the original hole still visible. There’s not much we can do about it unless we replace the entire firewall, so we smoothed out the edges and moved on. I’ll install a washer under the head of the engine mount bolt to give it a little more bearing area on the steel backing plate as well. Since these are mostly in compression, I’m not extremely worried about the very small deviation.
Kacy and I both ended up cutting ourselves on the stainless firewall while working with the engine mount. I took a chunk out of my pinky finger while trying to deburr a hole and kacy caught a metal sliver that was on a socket deep into her finger.
We decided to go ahead and try to fit the gear legs just to see how everything looked. Turns out they’re really hard to get into position all the way unless you freeze them first. We removed them and put them back on the side. There’s still a lot of work to be done before I raise the fuselage up high enough to sit on the gear legs.
-Paul
(Total Build Time: 506.1)