Brief Description: Finishing Up The Engine Install.
Over the past few days I have spent some short sessions in the shop wrapping up some final items related to the engine and cowl install.
I riveted the oil door in place and final installed and wired up the landing light.
I had left the air filters off until after I was done trimming the cowl to avoid filling them with cowl dust. Upon installation I found that the RH throttle cable rubbed on the filter. To eliminate the possibility of this eventually causing a hole in the filter I made a little tab with a grommet that the cable is routed through and using some countersunk rivets I fastened this to the side of the battery box.
When I was trimming the cowl I wanted the oil cooler as close to the cowl inlet as possible. Several S-20 owners have reported that the stock oil cooling system is marginal to slightly inadequate. Even though I have an additional radiant cooler on the firewall, I thought it made sense to make a new bracket that would rotate the outboard edge of the cooler closer to the cowl inlet for better airflow. Later I mounted the cowl without the spinner back plate which allowed me to see that the outboard oil fitting interfered with the cowl, so I ended up re-installing the original mounting bracket to locate the cooler in the original position. I also changed the outboard fitting in the oil cooler to a lower profile version, and this resulted in about 1/2" of clearance to the cowl. The threads of the new fitting were longer than the original fitting and it would not fully seat due to obstruction with the tubes inside the cooler, so some time on the belt sander was needed to shorten the threads to be equivelant to the orginal fitting.
This completes the engine installed with the exception of the prop/spinner and fluids (oil and coolant). Next up is to finish up some cabin stuff and then start prepping the wings for installation.
