This post covers both today and yesterday’s efforts on getting the top baffle seals installed.

Yesterday:

I started by placing the reinforcement strips along the front baffle wall, determining the spacing of the rivets (most are 1.5″) and then drilling out the rivet holes.  Once the aluminum baffle wall and reinforcement strips were drilled, I then added in the baffle seal, positioned and marked it, and then punched the holes out with a leather punch.

Here we have the front baffle wall left side reinforcement strip secured for rivet hole drilling.

Again, once the rivet holes were drilled through the metal parts, I would fit, trim and add in the top seal segments.

Once the top seals were in place, I trimmed the top edges to somewhat match the curvature of the metal baffle wall edge.  You can see that the just-added right side baffle seal has not been trimmed to shape.

Today:

Here we have the front baffle wall top seals installed, with a thin strip of RTV goop applied before the respective segments were riveted into place.

Here are some shots of the “backside” (technically front side) of the just-installed baffle seals.  I’ll note that I’m using “Cowl Saver”™ baffle seals, which claims 10x less friction with the top cowling to save the baffle seals over the long haul.

With the wider diameter head rivets that were supplied in the VANs baffle kit, using my hand riveter was resulting in about a 50% misfire rate when I used it on the lower aft baffle install.  I’ve had this cheaper Harbor Freight pneumatic riveter sitting new & unused in its box for a very long time now, so I broke it out to test it for this task.

After adding WAY too much hydraulic fluid into the reservoir (the instructions are woefully lacking on this key piece of info… as I found out watching a few YouTube videos on this thing!) and making a mess, I finally got it dialed in.  The max rated pressure for this tool is 90 PSI, and I found that 55-65 PSI is the best for setting these rivets.  However, I also found that any added material, as in the an extra baffle plate where they overlap at the engine centerline, it needs the max 90 PSI to prevent a misfire. But I’ll say overall it’s worked a treat.

I then started working on the left side baffle seals, with the main time-consuming task being drilling out the oval 1/2″ wide hole in the forward segment for the spark plug tool access hole.

Another shot of the left side baffle seals current install.

Although not baffle related at all, I figured I would add in this neat little hack of making up a template to fit the prop spinner around the prop (coming up soon!).  It was a canardian posting it on FB in prep for Oshkosh.

I knocked off work early evening to head down to Swansboro with Jess and crew to watch fireworks for an early Independence Day celebration.  Tomorrow too will be a very short work day (if any build work at all) as I have an afternoon party and then will be heading to fellow canardian Guy Williams house for food and fireworks.