Chapter 23 –
Engine install
Craig Catto is well known in the
pusher community for making excellent composite props. I’m fortunate enough to have him almost in my
back yard. The only problem is his
reputation is so good, he has a rather long waiting
list for his props. I wanted to make
sure my prop would be ready when I need it towards the end of Summer. I took the
hour and a half drive to Mokelumne Hill, CA. in March
to place my order and see his facility.
It reminded me very much of the racecar building facilities
of Ron Nash in the Central New York Finger lakes region. After driving for 3 or 4 miles down a one
lane country road, I came to Craig’s home.
A nice area set back away from the
Inside, he has probably 50 props in various stages of
construction. Here are a few shots and
the last is of Craig and his son, who had just jumped off his Yamaha dirt bike.
You can see all the clipboards on the back wall full of
orders!
I was running out of room in my little half “T” hanger and
was fortunate enough to get a call from my landlord late in March, saying they
had a full T-hanger available starting in April. I grabbed it and moved everything down to the
new hanger on the first. Luckily, it was only two doors down from my current
location, so I only had to move everything about 100 feet! Here are some shots of the new digs.
Next, I made the engine cowling mounting lips. This involves temporarily gluing foam to the
firewall and shaping it to the contour of the fuselage. Tape over the foam for
release and glass over the tape for the mounting lips. Very EZ!
Here is a shot of that step…
Now it was time to get the engine mounted so I could start
mounting the engine cowlings. I don’t
know if it was all those years of changing race car engines, but mounting this engine
was a real non event. I think the key is
to use a piece of chain between the engine hoist hook and the lifting ring on
the engine. I have heard of an engine or
two being dropped due to hooking the hoist hook directly into the lifting
ring…..talk about ruining your whole day!
Here are a couple of shots of the engine mounted…Notice the
yellow saw horse under the plane at the landing gear. It’s there to support the
back of the plane. With the engine mounted and no weight up front, the plane
would flip over on its butt smashing the engine flywheel and winglets on the
wings……not good!
Next, I started mounting the top engine cowling. I quickly found out why Wayne Hicks said this
exercise is like “herding cats” Every time you would line the cowling up on one
wing, it would move on the other wing.
If you got both wings lined up, it didn’t fit the firewall that well,
etc. Eventually, I got everything in place.
Once this was done, I used stir sticks to hold it in place and glassed
the mounting lips on to the wing roots.
Here are a couple of
photos……
Taking your time and really getting everything lined up
really pays off because once you start flying the plane around and other
builders start looking (critiquing?) your work, a real obvious part of the
assembly is how the spacing of the cowling is around the propeller hub is. I have seen a lot of misalignment on canard
aircraft……mine did come out perfectly…..I can show that off!