It’s been a very busy and very productive last couple of days and I’m finally getting around to getting all of it into a blog post.

I started off by test-engine turning a scrap piece of the 0.02″ thick 6061-0 aluminum sheet to ensure I wouldn’t destroy it by engine turning that thin of sheet, but it held up just fine.

So I engine turned the left wing root aft heat shield first.

I made a video of this whole wing root aft heat shield adventure (coming soon) and it shows a bit more details in there. That being said, I’ll note that leaving the freshly plasma cut wing root aft heat shields overnight, without cleaning off ALL of the water residue off left some permanent water marks, which was the final tip of the scales in my deciding to engine turn these parts.

Another shot of the left wing root heat shield engine turned.

I then engine turned the right wing root aft heat shield as well.  Obviously they both came out pretty spiffy (in my book at least).  Not shown here, but in the video, I then bent the forward 1.5″ tabs 90° on the metal brake.

Speaking of video, as part of my late night research I’ve been doing over the last couple of weeks specifically, I’ve included Action Cameras [often referred to generally just as “GoPro”s].  Being cheap and wanting the best bang for the buck, I ended up pulling the trigger on a dji Osmo Action 3 camera (the 4’s are out, but there’s not a whole lot of difference between them other than the 3 is about $100 less).

I used an older, but still small, Samsung video camera for this last video to see how well it works —that my very supporting/assisting Long-EZ build (ahem, for a time… as par usual!) girlfriend Gina bought me for a present.  Moreover, I wanted my action camera in hand since I plan on testing them out to possibly weld some RAM ball mounting points onto my roll bar before I do the final sanding, priming and painting of that.

I’ve also been pondering, assessing, researching and tweaking my under-strake latch lever for popping the topside strake storage hatch door.  I drew out a dimension  I thought was good for a lever handle, then drew out a design on a scrap spam mail envelope before modeling it up in Fusion 360.  I’m trying to design these with both ease of use/maintenance/install, ease of machining (out of 6061) and as lightweight as possible.  I then 3D printed it.

I transferred the dimension of the hatch lever into the design of each left and right bottom strake hatch lever assembly.  After some assessment, I realized I got the angle wrong on the right side (it’s not a near-perfect circle like the left side) and had to rework the rectangular lever opening.

I then tested out the general fit of the lever in the left side strake storage hatch lever bottom side strake insert… looking good.

And the same on the right side.  Note that I added a little depression on one edge to allow getting a finger grip onto the lever to pull it down.  It will be spring loaded as that is what will keep the 2 strikers securely into the tabs mounted on the inside of the actual hatch door.

I then rechecked the right side with the strake storage hatch door latch lever “installed.”

And then approximated the point where it would pop the spring-loaded top hatch door open.

I’ll note that besides the 45 minutes of putting my design on paper first, and then into Fusion 360 CAD, the above pics usually took about as much time as pulling the part off the 3D printer in the house, grabbing a pic of it, then taking it out to the shop and putting the parts into the strake, and grabbing another pic.  Most of the work was done on the 3D printer while I was in the shop working on the wing root aft heat shields… speaking of which!

I marked the vertical centerlines of the 5-ply wing root heat shield mounting tabs before securing the aft heat shields in place.  I then drilled 3/32″ holes into the heat shields and the mounting tabs, before securing them with Clecos.

Here we have all the mounting screw points clecoed on the left wing root aft heat shield (pic 1) and on the right (pic 2).

To keep the heat shields’ positioning as spot on as possible, I then drilled each mounting screw out to 1/8″ and secured the shields with the larger clecos.  Finally, I drilled out the holes with a 0.138″ diameter drill bit to allow installing #6 screws.

On the left side I installed all the K1000-6 platenuts with stainless steel cherry pop rivets, since with the engine installed I couldn’t get my solid rivet squeezer into place to do its job.  This is also why I’m leaving the final trim and finish of the 5-ply mounting tabs until after the engine is removed.  I had to trim the front edge of the front tabs (both left and right sides) to get the heat shields’ position spot on, when my Fein saw slipped a bit and nicked my oil cooler… nothing but a small cosmetic ding, but annoying nonetheless.

Here we have the left wing root aft heat shield engine turned, forward and aft tabs bent, and mounted into place.  Hoo-yah!  I’m calling this a significant success! (big smile)

I got the #6 mounting screw holes drilled out through the right wing root aft heat shield, but it was well past midnight and I was done for the evening… so I called it a night.

I plan on getting the K1000-6 platenuts installed on the right side tomorrow and press forward with other engine-related component installs as well.