Friday, February 4, 2011

Annual Inpspection

Ok, so aside form my motor woes there were other things to think about especially while I had the motor off. The early Rv-4's were different the the later models in a few ways. One of which that is of the most concern to me were the Firewall/Motor-mount Gusset reinforcement brackets.

I ordered a set from Vans and set about removing the old and installing the new. The first rivets on the plane that I drilled and subsequently pounded in too. Unfortunately the guy helping me suggested what I later found out to be the incorrect rivets and I would have to drill them all out again and set the correct flush rivets.

Around this time I was realizing that the help I had hired was less than enthralled about my project and doing anymore work on it than absolutely necessary. I first had my suspicions while shopping for a replacement motor. Nothing seemed to be "ok" in his book. Not because he actually checked any of my prospects out just because of one reason or another. So I finally found what I thought might be a solution.

This particular guy that was helping me had built a RV-3 with his dad many many moons ago that he still had and was in the middle of building a RV-4 when he started helping me with my project. He had a dyno-focal mount and a matching 0-320 he was planning to put on his -4. He had said he got the motor from a guy who said it was a first run timed out motor. I had known about it and was looking for something similar but with nothing being acceptable i decided to offer him what he paid for the motor plus a 1k finders fee but he had to trade me motor mounts (mine was conical mount) and the match drilled gear legs. I had the short gear he already had the long. So we ended up trading because he wanted to switch the motors on his flying -3 and soon to be done -4 anyway.

So I finally had a motor that my mentor would approve of hanging on the plane (mostly because it involved no extra work).