Van's RV-9A in Aurora

The Big Picture

The Big Picture
Flying! 8/28/2011

Sunday, March 21, 2010

4.2 hrs
Drilled the ground tab and 60A alternator slow fuse to the firewall. Fabbed a copper bus bar for the alternator fuse to starter contactor.



Drilled the engine mount to the firewall. Again, this simple sentence is a lot of work.



I found that the engine mount was just about right. Other builders have had to adjust it a little. As I said, the plans don't provide any detail for what seems like a really important task. You can see the trick I used here. After drilling the stock holes to 3/16, I put in a long AN3 bolt and wrapped in tape. I used enough tape to fit well inside a short piece of fuel line, which happens to fit just right in the engine mount sleeves.
The mount then hangs, presumably centered, from the top two bolts. Checking the bottom, they were almost exactly lined up. I then drilled and cleaned up the bottom two bolts, one at an time, taking the mount off and reinstalling with the newly drilled bolts. Then the tape and AN3 bolt came out of one of the upper corners, drill, deburr, reinstall, until all 4 corners are bolted in. Then I drilled the two bottom center holes. Deburr, add spacers as required, and voila, one engine mount. It'll come off again soon, but it looks like a real accomplishment.