Hello WIXers from the Hot Stuff mx gang.
The bitterly cold time is here in Indy right now, but it was more tolerable yesterday on the Mount Comfort ramp.
Gaylon and Rich got the remaining screws loose on the tailfeather leading edges. Next time we have a tolerable day, we'll pull those off and do that inspection. all the tail surface control cables run in front of the spar, so they're inspected and lubed at that time.
Our man John FedEx, who also is knows here as Johnny Gearpin, has been doing some nice sheetmetal bending lately, including a patch for a cracked rib in the inboard flap bay:
PJ and I worked out the problem with the intrument panel lord mount, and Glen made progress with control cable rigging. It was just cold, however, and colder inside the plane than outside, or so some said. There was enough to do inside the shop that no one had to freeze to death.
We had visiting mechanic Dave along with our man Scott--who's been overseas a lot lately, so he was good to see--paired up, working on the cowl flaps. A few bad brackets needed changing out, and lots of lube points to attend to. It was a good day's project for them.
All that stuff is now a very nice-functioning set of cowl flaps. here's a closer view of the items, including the odd little shims, of which there are about a million, and which are very important. The brackets are castings, and overtorqueing or leaving out shims are two good ways of making cracks.
Our man Roy, who leads most of our electrical projects, checked out the cowl flap motors for this installation using his homemade and extremely excellent drive-motor test set. Darn if one of the two wasn't bad, so he had that changed out in short order. Looking for something in the storage hangar, I found him a whole box of bad drive motors, and now Roy is happy as a clam, with a nice homework project.
PJ and Hot Rod Steve worked on installing the exhaust, and that's all done. You connect the ring segment, and then line up several cylinder joint flanges, or swear a bit while failing to quite do so.
That's the right side of the engine. the firesleeve is the prop feathering oil line. Steve had to go, so I left off safetying the carb to help install the last piece, the outlet pipe with the big ball joint.
Next time, we'll overhaul that other cowl flap segment, and finish building up the carb airbox, and likely install the nose ring on the engine. We build up engines to the Quick Engine Change config shown in the book before hanging them. That's nose ring, cowl flaps and air box all installed. Apart from the prop, this is the engine you see when you pull off all the dzus-fastened cowing panels. With it hung, all you have to do is slap on the cowling like normal, and the engine's all bottoned up.
Won't be long now before we see it back on the wing. But we're in the holiday season now, so that will undoubtedly be a sight we'll see in 2009.
That's the news. Take care,
_________________
IndyJen
------------------------------
Support "Hot Stuff"
Lockheed PV-2 Harpoon of the
American Military Heritage Foundation
http://www.amhf.org
Login
Register
FAQ
Search
Tonight she's gonna get real cold.
