Tail Installation (Nov. 27th, 2003)

For weeks I posponed drilling the horizontal tail attach holes. Today I dit it (after fitting/measuring a hundred times before).

If this holes thru the aft longerons are wrong then there's almost no cure. This will scrap almost the complete fuselage. To ensure proper installment I measured the distance from horizontal tail forward outer ends to the turtledeck joints. This was 152.5mm right and left, seens O.K. so far.

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Spark Plugs& Carb (Nov. 22th, 2003)

To remove the sparkplugs (Champion REL-38B) was a task of it's own. I had to grind down my plug wrench a lot until it fit the groove in the head. At the 5th plug my tool broke.

Tremendous torque was required. The reason was obvious when I inspected the plugs a bit closer:

The first two thread windings were completely filled with lead. Revmaster Aviation recommends only to feed their engines with 100LL (LL means 'lots of lead' - can't understand this, because the later VW Type 1s could be driven with no-lead gas). Removing this plugs did no good for the head's threading.

RevFlow Carb

The guillotine-slider made some screechy noise, so I completely disassembled and cleaned the Revflow carb (early model) today. Also the interior of the carb contained some of this white fibres, same as the one I found in the combustion chamber. Probably there was a composite fuel tank involved which let go some of the glass. After the carb was cleaned with soapy water it looks almost as new. There is no wear to recognize.

The carb consists only of a handful of components, it's build dirt-simple (compared to a Solex of Bing for example).

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This Engine Puzzles me (Nov. 20th, 2003)

Today I tried to remove the sparkplugs. The top ones were badly jammed into the head, the lower ones were impossible to remove with conventional tools. Would you ever expect a sparkplug here? The lifters and valve stems show no wear.

Cylinder has some strange dirt coating on.

Seems this combustion chamber never saw fire.

This piece of beauty is antiseptical clean inside and out. I assume the engine hung at the nose of an airplane which actually never got airborne.

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A Real Aviation Engine (Nov. 18th, 2003)

Via ebay I purchased a engine for the Sonex. It's a "Revmaster R2100D", build somewhere around 1985. Here are some pics of my treasure:

It's everything included: ignition, turbo, oilcooler and oilfilter, carburetor. The engine came with the complete Revmaster owners manuals (which are quite comprehensive).

The crank is forged 4130 steel with 3 degrees tapered prop hub. Right from the hub is a vacuum-pump which is driven via a coqbelt from the crankshaft. At right from the hob is the oilfilter.

This is Great! Rajay turbocharger.

Aluminum intake maniflod. Also note vacuum-pump and breather. Engine has real aviation sparkplugs and shielded ignition wiring.

Dual Bendix magnetos and geared starter

Four-in-one exhaust plumbing, all exhaust tubes are ceramic coated.

Oilcooler and Revflo carburetor.

Even this "spareparts" came with the package. The crak and prop hub seem prepared for hydraulic constant speed governor.

So that's what Santa Claus got for me (a little early ;-))