Started work on the engine today. Broke the engine crate apart to make it easy to lift the engine and removed the bolts securing the engine to the bottom of the crate. I was able to find a couple of guys at the airport to help lift the engine and place it on a work table. With the engine on a table and at a comfortable working height, I repositioned the water inlet elbow to point at around the 4 o’clock position as depicted in the plans. Marked the ignition harnesses, removed them from their mounting brackets and separated the wire housings. Disconnected the eight spark plug leads. Removed the Allen screw holding the 2 cushioned clamps and spacer to the inboard crank trigger coil. Replaced the spacer with a longer one and bolted the large clamp back to the trigger coil using a different Allen screw. I’ll need to get a hex driver that I can attach to a torque wrench to complete Step 1 of 46-02. Removed the plastic ignition cover to check the gap between the Trigger Cams and Trigger Coils. The prescribed gap of .012 to .016 is awfully hard to measure with a ruler. This is about paper thin. I used a digital caliper to compare the thickness of a piece of paper and the specified gap. It was pretty close. Slid the paper between the Trigger Cams and Trigger Coils and the gaps looked good. Before doing this step I removed the 4 top spark plugs to make it easier to rotate the crankshaft so I could line-up the cams with the coils. Reinstalled the spark plug after completing the gap check.
Did other work on the airplane.Re-crimped many of the butt splices using a new crimper that I got from Stein Air. During his last visit, the Tech Counselor recommended that I crimp some of the butt splices again and to use a better quality crimper. Replaced the saw horses supporting the tailcone with sturdy ones. This was a suggestion by fellow builder who had witnessed “cheap” saw horses fail resulting in damage to the supported aircraft pieces.
