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Marlins Web Site
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Date: 11-7-2022
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Number of Hours: 5.00
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Manual Reference: OPS-40
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Brief Description: Marking and Cutting Side Baffles
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It’s finally time to trim down the right and left cowling baffles to their final, trimmed height. Once again, the process is the same…use a wide, permanent marker taped to the end of a center-punch; set the upper cowl on top of the baffle; draw a line, cut the marker-line off; set the upper cowl on top of the baffle, draw a line…etc. As before, I had to do this same reiteration 7 times for each baffle piece. Then, once I got a perfect fit, I used a compass-scribe to mark 3/8” down from the perfect-fit mark to create a ‘final-cut” line. This time I had a new problem to solve. There was nothing in any of the plans to show why the front of these baffles was curved downward; much-less the dimensions of the curve. It was off to the VAN’s Air Force Forum to see what other builders did. Well, ‘look-it-there-little-mouse’…somewhere in my box of parts that may or may not be used, is a pair of fiberglass “elephant ears’ that need to be fiberglassed onto the upper flange of the air inlets. Either I got fed-up a long time ago with the Cowling Plans and threw the instructions for fiberglassing these pieces onto the upper cowling; or, VANs never included any instructions in my firewall forward kit. I had an inventory list with these pieces checked-off but no instructions. At this point in the game, it’s hard to say which was the case. Anyway, thankfully a bunch of builders have muddled through this process before me, and they have pretty good pictures showing what I need to do. So, I temporarily fitted my upper-inlet-flanges to the cowl and made the cut-lines for the curves.I found it was easier to use a side-cutting tin snips instead of the bandsaw and cut in-place, due to the numbers of times I had to remove and replace the baffles.
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Side Baffle & Upper Inlet Flange
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Cut made in Side Baffle
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Cutting Side Baffle In-Place
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