What's Up with Hot Stuff

Dan K · **Posted:** Sun Dec 21, 2008 7:22 pm

Very sorry 'bout that. Momma said, "Share".

It's a very good night for a very big brandy by a very big fire. :drinkers:

Nice work on the PV-2 by the way.

johnny gearpin · **Posted:** Wed Dec 24, 2008 12:02 am

I do like our open-air hangar, plenty of ventilation. It gave new definition to cold working metal.

Best regards all,

Johnny Gearpin

cadet77 · **Posted:** Wed Dec 31, 2008 8:52 pm

Okay Pooner,
I see the lid and the current contraption, so how does the "other" bombsight fit into the Harpoon?
Here is the location:

So what does the manual show on this installation?
Notice the handy tissue holder next to the fire extinguisher mount:

And while your back there, could you move the power switch to the ON position for the top turret:

What does Hot Stuff have at this station?

IndyJen · **Posted:** Thu Jan 01, 2009 9:51 am

Quote:

What does Hot Stuff have at this station?

I don't seem to have a picture handy, but I'll get one mebbe Saturday when we're out there working.

Basically, that hole in the step, where the bucket goes, is covered up in Hot Stuff. Looks like someone, long ago, took off the seat cover and hammered it flat--the hinge bracket is still there, but it's flattened--and then riveted it over the hole, closing it all up.

Now, with all this talk of everybody and their brother having the Necessary Convenience installed in their Harpoons, we're feeling left out, so there's talk of seeing if we can get us a replacement toilet seat in decent condition, and install that thing again.

I don't think we will let anyone do their business in it, however. But it seems like it would be a great place to store our spray bottles of mineral spirits and the like when we go on the road. It's also a great conversation piece, even now--we always point it out to the tourists, and they are always fascinated. Bathroom humor is always a crowd-pleaser, I guess.

GARY HILTON · **Posted:** Fri Jan 02, 2009 10:04 pm

If you REALLY want to get the publics attention, Get the bucket installed..preferrably an insulated one with a bottom drain and plug....fill with ice and your favorite beverage!

IndyJen · **Posted:** Sun Jan 04, 2009 7:31 am

Hello WIXers,

Time for the (supposedly) weekly maintenance report!

It was a balmy Four Degrees Celsius in Indiana yesterday, and the wind chill was not altogether unendurable, so we were able to get on out there and do a bunch of outdoorsy things on the old Harpoon. Flight control system cables are all tensioned now, as well as inspected and lubed. The nose ring's been brought out to the engine, and that will be our "come in and get warm, and while you're at it, install a couple bolts" project for the next week or so.

The most spectacular--if you can call it that--project was the empennage inspection, the left side of which is now complete. This involves, among other things, removing all of the leading edges.

For a January day in Indiana, there wasn't all that much suffering, especially considering that we were all out there for the entire day. Our crew is full of manly men! Well, except for the girls.

There's Rich, the Official Dad of IndyJen, and young Aaron checking the rudder cables. Make sure there are no broken strands, then clean and lube, and then the tail can start going back together.

Of course, in doing that, there's always going to be bad nutplates to replace, and other odd things are always found that need to be corrected. Which is to say, it's a typical annual inspection: if you're not finding the odd things, you're not looking hard enough!

This was probably a more difficult chore in the old days, when these hollow leading edges were hot-air ducts. Hot Stuff's heat exchangers were removed decades ago, long before we got our hands on her. So, the process for us is a bit less complicated than it was back when, because there's less ductwork for us to deal with. Nowadays, it's mainly tedious, with a million screws to remove and replace.

In engine-related news, the carb work is pretty much done, with the airbox installed.

The cowl flaps hang from the airbox, so it's good to have it on there. This little item is always a pain, as it involves a floppy rubber duct, which band-clamps to the airbox and the carb. If it's not just right, that airbox will not go down into that rubber duct, and you'll battle it and swear profusely for what seems like forever ... and then the darn thing will just pop in there, and you're good.

There's the old man again, attaching the little "H" brackets that tie the box to the cylinder heads. We actually did this last week, when the AMHF was nominally closed for the holidays.

That's the news of the week, dear readers. We're moving right along, all right. I expect it won't be long before we're putting the cockpit back together.

Thanks to PJ for this week's pictures.

IndyJen · **Posted:** Sun Jan 11, 2009 12:34 pm

Another week's maintenance on the Harpoon has come and gone, so it must be time for the weekly update ...

The weather here in central Indiana this week hasn't been particularly great, unless you're a penguin, or possibly a hockey player. If you like cold, icy, and dreary, this is the place for you! (And the forecast indicates that by mid-week, oh boy will it ever be the place for you!). Yesterday was cold and wet, and so the work stayed indoors this maintenance day. We're rapidly closing in on the end of the QEC (quick engine-change) kit build-up, and a day in which the whole crew attacked that project has left us with not all that much remaining on that project.

Around mid-day, you wouldn't have been able to persuade me that we'd be this far along, though. About an hour into the workday, all our shop lights went into brown-out mode. A little troubleshooting by our electrical guys revealed that one of our 110V inputs was completely gone, and with it, our shop heat, all of our office lights, our air compressor, and anything else that runs on 220. We plugged along, installing the nose ring and assembling the cowl flaps by flashlight, and around midday, lost the rest of the power.

Well heck. You can't put together the R-2800 by braille. This was disappointing as could be.

But about ten seconds away from me calling it all off, and sending everyone home, the electric company came through and delivered the goods: lights back on, full bright, and everything back on line. And so we were able to press on, after all. And now we're at the point where we're only waiting for the overhauler to send us our missing fuel injection pipe, and the accessories shop to send us our starter, and we will be ready to hang this engine.

So, on to the photographic record of the day:

There's Rich, who did a good job of inspecting the exhaust clamps for torque, proper fasteners, and the like. We needed to get that done before we covered it all up with cowl flaps. Rich has been with us for a couple months now, and is doing a great job.

That's a good example of how things were for about half the day, when we still had any shop lights working at all, before the Big Blackout. Tough to see what you're doing, but the boys just won't be deterred.

The guys installing the nose ring there are Scott, one of our co-pilots, and Rich, the Official Dad of IndyJen. Above them, pretending to work on it, is Gaylon--he's an expert machinist, owner of his own shop. He's up there pretending to work on the nose ring because I made him get up there--"Hey Gaylon! I never get any pics of you, so climb on up there and look busy!"

He was good-humored enough to comply, but pretending to work is not Gaylon's usual modus operandi; he is enormously productive, and in fact does some amazingly high-quality work for this old bird. His latest project, in conjunction with electrical guru Roy, has restored our cowl-flap actuating system to better than new condition. Just look at these beautiful little devices:

New bearings, seals, and custom-made replacement worm gears in those things, and with their new powder-coated finish they are things of beauty, working like a dream, better than the day they left the factory.

There's Scott and your own IndyJen putting one of those devices in place on a cowl flap segment, preparatory to installing the whole cowl flap ring. You can see that it's late in the day, because we have no need of night vision goggles to work anymore.

Hanging these cowl flap segments is an exercise in creative geometry, but then, isn't it always the way? The orientation has to be just right, or the little "H" brackets won't line up with the ears on the cylinder heads, and all you can do is swear and bang up your knuckles. But we've done this lots of times, so the process wasn't too difficult, really.

There's Scotty again, working on getting one of the many bolts inserted through one of the many H-brackets.

Only a couple more minor things to do on the engine, and then it'll be time to hang it, weather permitting. We're moving right along.

Till next time,

TAdan · **Posted:** Sun Jan 11, 2009 4:04 pm

I am very impressed that you guys are able to work out in the cold like that. Brrr!

Thanks for the Update.

PJ · **Posted:** Mon Jan 12, 2009 5:17 am

TAdan--

We like to keep the old Harpoon in touch with her Aleutian heritage!

PJ
PV-2Harpoon "Hot Stuff"
www.amhf.org

PJ · **Posted:** Mon Jan 12, 2009 8:16 am

Here are "the conditions that prevailed" on Attu. VPB 139.

Pretty much the same mixed bag of weather in Indiana.

PJ
PV-2 Harpoon "Hot Stuff"
www.amhf.org

Steve Nelson · **Posted:** Mon Jan 12, 2009 8:52 am

Except there are trees in Indiana. During the war the guys posted in the Aleutians joked that "there's a woman behind every tree." Of course, there's nothing there but rocks, volcanic ash, and tundra.

Great work guys. I've seen Hot Stuff at several shows..she even flew up here to Battle Creek a few years back. Beautiful bird!

SN

IndyJen · **Posted:** Mon Jan 12, 2009 8:38 pm

PJ has had those pictures on the wall back by the coffeepot for a year or two at least, and I just purely love them. Those poor guys. Wet feet, chilled to the bone: must be working on a Harpoon!

We need to make us a set of rudder battens like the ones they have installed in the top photo. The manual has a depiction of it in the tool listing, but we'll have to deduce the dimensions.

It's supposed to be plenty cold this weekend. My boss will be up in Toronto, and their forecast is a whole lot warmer than ours.

IndyJen · **Posted:** Sun Jan 18, 2009 8:47 pm

Another Saturday, another Maintenance Day.

It's been a bitter cold week in Indiana, WIXers. I personally spent a good portion of the week huddled under every blanket I own, with cats duct-taped to my feet. But we got a little bit of break for the weekend: temperatures got clear up into the twenties, and it seemed balmy. Why, I didn't even put on the long-johns for the maintenance day. But then, all of the planned work was indoors anyhow.

A fairly light turnout among the maintenance force, but we still had people enough to get the job done, and enough slack in the schedule to actually have a lunch break and everything (we have been busy enough the last two weeks that we actually forgot to eat).

At least this week, the ramp shack didn't need any work! This month, we've had heater failure, electrical failure, toilet freeze-up, and you name it. It was nice, for a change, to not have to cut half of the workforce loose to remedy the infrastructure problems.

So anyhow, we've now pretty much wrapped up the engine prep, and that involved lots of detail work, which isn't necessarily all that photogenic, but here come the couple shots that were captured before the camera batteries died ...

There's PJ under the blower case. She was replacing the square plug in the case drain, which was installed by the OH shop to seal it up, with the hose-barb fitting used to connect the drain pipe.

That case drain is one of the things our fire guard looks for during engine start. When the primer is doing its job, fuel streams out of that pipe. The pilot, who can't see it, gets a hand signal to indicate "fuel" or "no fuel."

We had various people combing the engine, doing QA--checking fasteners and safetying and such--and the rear-case items needed to be installed, not least of which was the missing fuel transfer pipe, which was returned to us earlier in the week.

There's Rich, the Official Dad of IndyJen, safetying the three filister-head screws at the carb end of that pipe. The pipe goes from a triangular pad on the aft-left corner of the carb, snakes around the left side of the carb and down to the top of the blower case, where it connects with a banjo fitting. Just visible beyond the case is the Other Rich, who was safetying the bolt on that end.

That pipe is a critical item, as the engine won't run without it. We had the disappointing experience of getting out our "spare" pipe from the hangar, and discovering that it is no spare at all--about eight inches too short, clearly belongs to a different engine. But as I say, the overhauler, who's been good to us throughout this whole process, came through with the proper one.

Having killed the camera batteries taking those two photos, we then had plenty of free time for installing the various fittings on the rear case--fuel lines, primer lines, oil inlet and outlet fittings, oil temp probe and oil pressure nipple.

The dash-31 engine was always used in multi-engine applications (as far as I know, it was only for Harpoons and Venturas), so quite a few fitting locations are mirror-image: you use the one appropriate to the side the engine will be installed on. For example, the oil pressure fitting, which feeds the gauge in the cockpit, installs on the aft "shoulder" of the case, on the inboard side. If it's the left engine, the fitting goes on the right side of the engine.

There's a similar situation with the hydraulic pump, and tachometer generator. They can go on either side of the case, as needed.

We're still waiting for the starter to come in, but the accessory shop called this week, and it's on its way back to us. If it comes in, we'll have it installed in no time Saturday, and the generator right afterwards. It's all down to the weather, apart from that--if conditions are reasonable, we could be hanging this engine next weekend.

I will be sure to put fresh batteries in the camera for that!

In the meantime, Gaylon has put together a slide show of the process used to overhaul the cowl flap actuators. I'll post up a little article about that mebbe mid-week.

That's the news from the AMHF ramp--see you next time,

PJ · **Posted:** Tue Jan 20, 2009 5:08 am

Here's another piece of the "Hot Stuff" restoration equipment. The Mk8 gunsight for the Martin 250 turret.

This one was built here in Indianapolis at Lukas-Harold. They also built the famous Norden Bombsight. This one appears factory fresh and is on the wooden shipping plate.

This is where you set the wingspan of the aircraft you are shooting for:

And there is the pipper: (hard to capture with a flash)

Data plate (again-tough to get with the flash):

We will be working on the turret this spring, hoping to at least be able to turn it by the hand cranks. Does anyone have a source for the Martin decals that appeared on the armor plate? Any data plates?

PJ
PV-2 Harpoon "Hot Stuff"
www.amhf.org

IndyJen · **Posted:** Fri Jan 23, 2009 6:18 pm

About those rebuilt actuators ...

Our man Gaylon, the machinist who overhauled our cowl-flap and oil-cooler-shutter actuators, sent me some pics of the rebuild process, so I thought I'd share 'em.

These things were in pretty bad shape, with critical parts just worn down to nothing.

That's a representation of the whole assembly, ready to go back together. A good portion of each unit just badly needed to be disassembled, cleaned, and lubed, but almost across the board, the worm gears--which are driven via flex-cable by electric motor--were bad, as were the bearings they ride in.

There you see the worm gear. The tang-ends of these items are the bits that go bad first--the ends are closest to being exposed to the elements, of sixty years of moisture seeping in takes its toll. You just can't get replacements for these things, but you've gotta have working cowl flaps, and you're not going to have anything working without the worms. Luckily, we've got Gaylon and his machinist's expertise.

He used the best of the old worm gears as patterns to make new ones. The one on the right, if it isn't obvious, is new; the others are old ones in various stages of wear and degradation.

The bearings were all open-cage ball bearings. The same decades-long pattern of moisture getting in there had about destroyed these little items, too ...

These bearings are no longer manufactured nor stocked anywhere we could find, but luckily, there do exist sealed bearings of the same dimensions, which we went with. The replacements are aerospace bearings, currently used in some weapon systems, a situation which required Gaylon to jump through various administrative hoops before the company would accept his order.

Anyone who knows ol' Gaylon understands why some of us thought it was pretty darn funny that he, of all people, had to stand up and declare that no, he is not a terrorist before they'd allow him to buy a handful of bearings. Heh.

So that's the story of those things. There are six of them (two per cowl flap assembly, plus one mounted to each firewall to operate the oil cooler shutters). They are currently just about the cleanest, nicest, smoothest-working devices on the whole Harpoon. Thanks, Gaylon! And here's probably a good place for a shout-out to our electrical guru, Roy, who rebuilt the electric motors that drive these actuators.

It has been nice and balmy here in Indiana for most of this past week. Of course, it is turning frigid again just in time for tomorrow's maintenance work-day. We're hanging the engine on the wing tomorrow anyhow. We have worked too long on the thing, and we're impatient to see it where it goes. And anyhow, last time we went through this, it was freezing then, too. So why should this time be any different?

In any case, look for pics of that evolution, most likely Sunday. It'll be a great day to see the R-2800 back on the wing where it belongs!

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