“No bird ever flew nonstop from New York to Tokyo, or raced 15 miles high at triple the speed of sound.                                                                                                   
  Birds do something else.   They do not conquer the air; they romance it..”


Peter Garrison

Jur's RV7 Aircraft Factory
3497 hours
and counting

Starting engine baffling. I purchased the Vans Aircraft IO360 baffle kit.  The Sam James manual also gives cut out plans for baffles but it's much more convenient I think to use the Vans kit and adapt it.
I cannot fully install it as is because I'm using the Sam James plenum. This plenum lays much lower on the engine and creates a high pressure air chamber above the engine. The Vans baffle kit is using flexible rubber sealing against the top cowling. The plenum does not require this and is a much nicer solution but it means that the top of the baffle kit will have to be shortened quite a bit in order to fit nicely with the plenum. I couldn't think of anything other to start with for now so I'll take this as far as I can for now by following the baffle kit plans until I hit the forward side of the kit where the differences become too large. 

Started by making cleaning and deburing a lot of the small parts described in the first parts of the manual. 

I forgot how much time it takes to clean edges, 3M polish edges and sand the parts.

In the end of the session I got at least some of them ready. At least I'll know what to do in the next days. There are plenty of pieces.