Final Cowling pictures and internal Baffling

I have finished the fire wall forward. The Fiberfrax is installed, the latex primer is applied and the fuel and electrical wires have been run. The internal baffling is finished. I have some very thin countersunk Stainless steel washers that I am bonding to the surface at every fastener. This will reinforce the countersunk holes very cleanly.

L/H side



My Friend Ed ttp://mmwauto.com/index.php/services.html  did the final paint on these parts. As you can see from the pictures the finish is excellent. He has a huge down draft paint booth. Its big enough to fit both of my wings and the fuselage. The paint by the way was Summit racing single stage Ureathane paint. http://www.summitracing.com/sitemap.aspx?ibanner=FD4

R/H side

Unfortunatly I had to cut away the blister for the tuned pipe. A 4 stroke version will have the full blisters, but it will be a new cowl. I'm looking at an all composite version in the LSA/Experimental class. Wood is really light, but it does take some time to work with. My new idea is to build most of the fuselage with flat sheets of 1/4" PVC foam core pre cured in a platten press with a layer of 120 fiberglass on each face. Preliminary sizing of the shear panels show this would be adequate for a fuselage. A structure built like this would not requite much final sanding and prep.

Completed baffles

This is the final design f the baffles. Not shown is another Baffle that seals off the back half of the side blister. There is only one place now for the air to flow and thats across the cylinder cooling fins.









looking aft at my messy shop

 Some more pictures

Tonight I am correcting a design problem I should have addressed when I first built the fwd turtledeck over the fuel tank. I'm making it removable. I'm buying some of Jim Weibes beautiful lightweight instruments, one of them is an electronic fuel gauge. I need to remove the tank so I can add the sender