I started off today by pulling the peel ply, razor trimming the overhanging glass and hitting the edges with a sanding block on the aft wing root closeout that essentially seals up the wing root area as a fire block, on each side respectively of course.  Here we have the left side (pic 1) and the right side (pic 2).  Next up will be configuring and cutting out the aft wing root heat shields in prep for mounting.

I ran out for some errands and to grab lunch with Jess.  Shortly after I returned home mid-afternoon UPS delivered the 5/8″ tube bender I ordered off of Amazon.  Well, 15 minutes later I pressed it into service to shape the 5052 aluminum tube that I ordered from ACS.

I took my time to ensure I didn’t create too much of an angle on any one bend, but even with just the normal, slow, don’t-screw-this-up! workflow it took hours for me to get this one darn tube bent to flow with the exhaust pipes AND be angled up and outboard at a good angle on the front end to intersect the black crankcase vent hose.

After countless iterations of mounting the tube, removing it, bending an angle just a hair and then remounting it, I finally got to a point where I was ready to cut the black crankcase vent tube hose to allow me to join it to the aluminum vent tube.  However, when I tried to use the big wire cutters, that mo-jamma hose just laughed at those cutters.

I tried a couple of other cutting implements, but in the end my razor knife did the job… albeit not elegantly (But I didn’t stab anything in the engine compartment or ME!).

And here we are: the 5052 aluminum crankcase vent tube installed!

And here’s a shot of the ‘middle area” with the 2 forward hose clamps securing it to the exhaust pipes.  I’ll further note that I have a temporary hose clamp on the aluminum tube to black rubber hose connection until I do final install on the crankcase vent tube (after the exhaust pipes are officially installed… soon).  When I do the final black hose to aluminum tube connection I’ll secure it with wire using my Clamp-tite tool (much lighter!).

And here we have a shot of the very aft end of the crankcase vent tube (pic 1) and the forward end with black rubber hose going up to the crankcase vent exhaust port (pic 2).

I then turned off the lights in the last 2 shop bays and placed lights on the top right side of the engine to spot any offending gaps in the baffle sealing hi-temp RTV.  I worked the right side for nearly 45 minutes before heading over to Jess’s for a late dinner.  I still have a few more difficult-to-reach areas left to do, which I’ll hit in the next day or so.

I’ll also note that as I was doing research over the last week I found an article in the COBA magazine from Mike Beasley relaying a conversation he had with Terry Schubert on making control surface gust locks.  In the article Mike said he used 0.025″ thick 2024 and then painted them red (actually he told us to paint them red, he hadn’t done so as per pics shown… poor execution in my book! Hahaha!).

With the dimensions nicely shown in the article, I spent less than 10 minutes modeling it up in Fusion 360 CAD to then 3D print one out in red ABS.  I used a thickness of 0.032″ since this is plastic, but it still came out fine.  Probably a bit more flexible then the aluminum, but strong in sheer nonetheless.  Moreover, it took me about 2 minutes to kick off 3 prints total on these, which I did over the last couple of days.  Voila!

Tomorrow I plan on continuing my engine installation push!