Jur's RV7 Aircraft Factory
3497 hours and counting

Work is continuing on painting. Some time back, Brent has painted my wheelpants in white. That already looked awesome.
Yesterday he showed up with the 2 wheelpants finalised using the paint scheme I had given him and I have to say that I'm blown away with the result.

Here is a drawing of the design I had given him.

These are pictures of the both sides of the finished wheel pants.
I'm very satisfied with the color choice I made before and we can now with a peacefull mind continue painting on the other components.

Here is an image of the outboard side

And an image of the inboard side.

Glue time again... this time we are going to use Sikaflex glue to fixate the windscreen on the top forward fuselage and rollbar.
The product used is this 295 UV. You can easily appy this with a caulking gun. It's very sticky and creates a mess quite easily if you are getting sloppy on the trigger

The sifkaflex is very efficient but needs to be applied on a primed surface. There is a compatibility chart with recommendations on which primer to use on which surface with 295UV glue.

On the tof fuselage surface which is bare aluminum, I am using the sika activator 205 which prepares the aluminum before priming. I think it's an etching product.

After the application of 205, I will prime it with the Sikaflex Multi Marine primer (SMM).

On the rollbar which is already painted with a 2K epoxy primer, I am applying SP-209D primer as well as on the windscreen. The windscreen is made of PMMA and this primer is especially for that material.

 First I defined the line where the sikaflex needs to be applied so that I can apply a tape for masking before priming.

Also on the roll bar, I used black 3M tape to define the place where I want to apply the primer. It's hard to remove any sikaflex which comes in contact with the primer. glue that hardens next to the primer can quite easly be remove.
This allows you to make a nice straight line with the glue and fill the gap between rollbar and windscreen with the little fillet of sikaflex.

 Taped the windscreen with 3M tape to define the border for the primer. I'm being very liberal on the side of the primed surface but it won't be visible anyway because the epoxy fairing will cover this anyway.
Scuffed the exposed surface with red scotchbrite. Just getting the gloss of is sufficient, no need to go deep with rough sandpaper.

 Then taped the forward line on the top fuselage. once taped, I scuffed the surface with scotchbrite for better adhesion of the aktivator and primer.

One of the issues of installing the windscreen over the rollbar with all the sticky goo on it is that it becomes very difficult to place the spacers between the rollbar and windscreen. The black mess will be everywhere and no way to see where exactly the drilled holes were. So I decided to glue the plastic spacers together. Held them togehter and pressed on eachother with some screws and nuts. Once dried, I will glue this in the same way on the right locations on the windscreen so the are already in place when having to position the windscreen in the moment of heat.

I have made a small test piece of scrap lettover of the canopy and glued it on on the rollbar using the primer on the winsdscreen and roll bar. When cured, I stuck to it like you will never be able to remove it again.
I had to cut with a razor blade through the glue and still couldn't get the glue separated from the primer. This stuff stick really well to that primer. I recleaned the bar afterwards.

 windscreen fully scuffed now and ready for primer application

Also finished scuffing and matting the rollbar with red scotchbrite.

 Same on the front fueselage exposed skin.

 Here I have applied the SP-209D primer on the windscreen. This stuff flashes quickly and dries fast. I think it also has some glue in it. Your brush will become useless once you"re done with it.

 Same primer applied on the rollbar contact area

 Applied the primer SMM (sikaflex multipimer marine) on the aluminum skin after 205 aktivation. For some reason the PMM primer is transparent color. Doesn't matter much as it will all be covered by the black glue stuff.

 Once the primer dried, I glued the spacers on the inside of the drilled holes and did a final fit on the rollbar.

 Then applied aktivator and SMM primer on the clips.

 As the primer was now dry and the windscreen on, I drew a new line under the bottom of the windscreen to see the place where to apply the glue.

And then the mess started. Went all the way around with the caulking gun and applied a big bead of glue about a centimeter wide on the line all around the top fuselage skin and the rollbar.

You have to work quickly as the glue already starts forming skin after half an hour.

I started spreading out the glue on the outside of the windscreen using rounded plastic card in order to to create a nice round filet.

Then started cleaning up the mess by removing the excess glue. 

I did not touch the inside. it looked already good and is not visible behind the windscreen fairing.
Then started cleaning up the glue between rollbar and windscreen from both sides.
No clamps needed as I still have the screws in the windscreen around the rollbar and the rest of the windscreen is held in place by the clips. 

After all things went smooth. I thought it would be more of a hassle.

The Bill Lane Plenum is finally finished... I took some images for fellow builders who need to form the mental pictures. I received some pictures from Bill himself which helped me picture the process so I hope this contributes to other people who also are looking for images of Bill's plenum. I described the process in earlier articles. Just search for Bill Lane or Plenum in the search and you"ll find them easily.
The plenum can be purchased at James Aircraft at https://www.jamesaircraft.com/ and I can warmly recommend it to everyone installing the James cowling. It allows you to use the standard Vans baffle kit and sits a lot higher above the cylinders than the version 1 James plenum does.

I decided to paint the finish color in the same color as my Superior Engine block. It came out really nice and the black rock covers stand out really well.

The fit is nice and tight, small remaining gaps will be filled with RTV on final installation.

 Passenger side top, #1 cylinder

Nice fit at the top on the baffle sides

A shot of the right side customised front baffle and anti rotation angle.

Similar shot on the left side.

It took me months to build this and get it finalised but I'm absolutly thrilled with the result !

I might still put some black paint in the air inlets for a nicer view from the front. That's on the to do list for final tweaking.

Milestone day ! 
This is one of those days that you know mark the timeline of building your airplane. The moment you hang the engine in the engine mount.
After many days of thinking about missing any things on the firewall, I came to the conclusion that this is the right moment to hang the engine and move on to the firewall forward work. There are some more things I need to do on the firewall, but it's not possible to be sure about the exact location to drill large holes in the firewall until I can actually evaluate the position with the engine in place. i'm thinking of the mixture and throttle cable and alternate air cable. Other than those, I'm pretty sure everything on the firewall is in place.

The same thinking goes for the rear of the engine case. Make sure the 45° restrictor fitting for the oil pressure is mounted in the engine case prior to hanging the engine. It's almost impossible to install this once the engine is on the engine mount. Mine was already installed by PMM during engine assembly. While you are at it, also install the other oil cooler fittings in the engine case (in and out). These can also be done later but it's easier now.

First step was to remove the safety straps that held the engine to the wood pallet that was used for transport. I want to keep track of how this was done as this engine is a brand new engine that has not yet been on the test bench. When all is ready, I will need to unhook the engine and bring it to PMM Wingservice to have it running on the test bench for a first time. This has the disadvantage of extra work on removing the engine and all connections again and having to do it again after it has been run. On the other hand, the major advantage is that I do not have to worry about corrosion and idle time of the engine as it has not yet been running. The cylinders are as if they would be in a stock location on a bench waiting for an engine. There has been no movement of the cylinder heads on the cylinder walls and everything has an oil film on it as delivered from Superior Air Parts. Whether building takes me another 3 years or just 1, it won't matter. I'm gladly willing to take that extra work knowing there is no pressure.

The engine was protected well on the front and rear crankcase and supported in the front under the front with some wood block supports. I'll have to keep all this in stock so that I can re use it in the same way when I bring the engine back to PMM.

Using the engine hoist, we pulled it up, removed the pallet and moved it over to the front of the airplane. Alain helped me on this task to keep the engine in position. It's best having some extra hands around when you do this as the engine is heavy and the bolts are not always willing to go in as easy as you think it would. 

The last part of the moving is the most critical as you don't want your magneto's or fuel pump to bump into the engine mount. Having one person moving and another one guiding the engine is no luxury.

Also notice I leveled the airplane in flight mode. This is much easier to position the engine than if it would be sitting on all tyres which would require you to position the engine at an angle. This leveled way makes it much easier.

I found some documentation online from someone who did this before and described the process. I studied this carefully and upfront, had a close look at the barry mounts and dyna bolt set. You can read it following this link https://www.myrv14.com/buildlog/20150917/Engine_Hanging.pdf. Vans Aircraft also has some drawings available which are not part of the standard plan set that you receive with the kit. 

Study the plans carefully, the barry mounts have to be positioned so that the engine rests on the compression side in the bottom and the compression side in the back on the top mounts. The compression barry mounts are the ones that have a step in the rubber. The non compression ones don't have the ribble on it and look like plain rubber. If I remember well, the non compression ones also are a little larger. Also take care that the washers are in the correct locations. The barry mounts come with one big washer in the box. It's good to assemble the order of all this before starting to move the engine and have thing prepared well. I colored the position of the large washer red in the picture above.

There are 2 lengths in the dyna bolt kit. 2 x AN7-43A and 2 x AN7-44A. The longer ones go on the bottom side, the shorter ones go on the top. The difference is not much more than the length of one of the washers.

Start with the 2 top bolts. The first one is very easy... tighten the bolt but don't torque it yet, you'll probably have to loosen them again working on the bottom bolts.
You do need to tighten the first so that the barry mounts compress allowing the other hole to come in line with the engine case. Remember this is a dynafocal mount, the bolts point inwards. If the bolt is not tightened enough on one side, it's impossible to insert the second one. As you tighten the bolts, the barry mounts compress and also position themselves in the engine mount. That's important.

What I found very annoying is that you can't put a socket on the bolt head as the engine mount is in the way.  I used an extension on the wrench but that didn't make it easier.

The engine sometimes needs a bit of persuasion to get it in position :) Although I don't think this did much. Found out later it's more important to tigthen the other side and use the engine hoist to lower or lift the engine a bit in order to get a bolt in.

The large washer goes between the compression mount and the crankcase as a spacer for the bottom mounts. On the top mounts, I have put that washer on the compression mounts under the bolt head as you can see in the image below. The image has both top bolts in place and tightened.

From there on, things went less smooth and it took about an hour or 2 before I got the last bolt in so I did not take any more pictures until it was done.

I'll try to describe the further process I took.

As both top bolts were tightened, I lifted the engine a bit using the engine hoist. This allowed me to slip the barry mounts between the case and the engine mount. Don't forget the large washer between the barry cookie and the engine case. Don't forget the compression side of the barry mounts is against the engine for the bottom mounts. Then I lowered the engine again and after some wiggling I was able to put the 3rd bolt in. I did have to loosen the top bolts a bit though. 

The fourth bolt is the most difficult one. Looking with a mirror through the hole there was no way the bolt would go in. After a lot of moving up and down, I finally discovered my problem : the washer between the barry mount and the engine case was not aligned and the pressure on it is high enough that it makes it hard to move it. After lifting the engine a bit and tapping on it, I could get it more or less into place. 
A second trick I used was to take an old bolt which was smaller in size and grind down into a guide pin. Once I could slide that smaller bolt in, I was able to wiggle it around in order to get that washer and the engine hole into alignment. I put some grease on the final bolt shank and finally was able to put it in with only very light tapping of a rubber hammer.

I was feeling relieved as I bolted the final nut on that fourth bolt.

As final step, I torqued the bolts. These are AN7 which take 450 - 500 inch/lbs. I used the middle value of 480 inch/lbs. The engine will still need to come off as mentioned earlier but the position of the engine is very important when installing the cowling so I torqued it to the final value.

Took some pictures of the plane with the engine in place. This surely is a big milestone and is a "feel good" moment during the build.

Happy camper...

As I had some time left, I took out the fuel throttle body. This comes with a plastic spacer.

The orientation of the throttle body was a bit of a mystery at first but soon figured out what side was the throttle lever and which side the mixture. 
In the image below I installed it on the forward horizontal induction air intake at the cold sump of the engine. In the image below, the throttle lever is the gold colored arm.

Finally I covered the intake with some paper and masking tape in order not to get foreign objects entering the engine.

End of a productive day was off course celebrated with Alain with a good strong Belgian HQ beer.