Cowling vents and heat shields

So after melting various bits and bobs in the engine bay I finally installed some vents to vent the hot air after shutdown. I have not painted them yet but I think they look ok.

I was going to go to the trouble of sinking them in the cowling flush and so on but thought I'd trial them and maybe one day do that or probably just paint them first and fly till all the bugs are sorted. They are just a vent I bought on ebay, plastic and screwed onto the cowling. I have flown about 4 hours with these on and have noticed no change in engine temps during flight but after shut down, if you hold your hand over the vent, you can feel the hot air venting. This makes me smile.

Before I added these vents I had lots of trouble. I don't know if this caused the MGL RDAC to fail but I guess I'll never know.

I have also added some very crude looking (at this stage) heat shield over the engine mounts and trigger modules.

The heat shields are just made with some 6061 scrap I had and stainless zip ties and the insulation is a sticky backed  sheet that I have just stuck on and crudely moulded onto the accessory plate. I have also double wrapped the exhausts with two layers of exhaust wrap now too.  Since doing these small things my engine mounts have not needed changing and they seem to have stopped compressing even after the shortest of flights.

This pic shows the near new engine mounts after about 4 x hours flight. They had melted and crushed up and the pin was rubbing badly on the accessory plate. You can feel it in flight when they have worn or melted down as the engine begins to vibrate badly telling you that's the end of flying for that day mister.  Oh don't worry about the horrible brown leaks down the lower engine block, it's not oil , it's permatex from the initial engine build :)

 A vain attempt to add a washer or two to keep them tight, you can see how much the back one has compressed so I fitted a new front rubber and some washers to try and limp me through another flight.

Probably hard to see but the pin was rubbing on the accessory plate. New mount time again.

An indicator of how much it sagged as the prop rubbed on the cowling and scratched the paint,,, wasn't happy at all.


These lower three pics show the trigger modules and how much they had swollen up like balloons due to the heat from the turbo after shutdown, I assume, as inflight they have air running over them. I expect it was just the radiant heat when turned off cooking them or maybe in flight who knows. All I know is that since fitting the shield over the trigger modules they have stopped swelling. Both the top and bottom modules are swollen like this now but they aren't getting worse thankfully.  I emailed tech support early in the piece to ask about modules swelling up and was told I was the only one they had seen this happen to. As usual I guess I have done something wrong and not followed the instructions carefully enough. Anyway, it's fixed now. I will probably order 2 x new modules and another complete set of engine mounts and fit them so that now with the shielding in place the components should live long and happy lives in my cowling with the vents on the roof.

It's been a while and I apologize for what you're about to read.

Yes it sure has been some time since posting on this blog last. A million and one things have happened and not all of them good.

 To take us up to where I am at this exact moment can be summed up with the one word "Grounded" .   I had been chipping away at the hours and now have about 17 or so. Sonex released a service bulletin regarding the turbo and what needs to be done. Essentially the bulletin requires the use of only one type of oil worldwide and of course it has to be a specialist oil only made in the great US of A. That's fine, however trying to get my hands on it is rather difficult. I had quickly found out no one from the US will post it like normal freight so I had to find a supplier in Australia that had already done the importing and buy it from them. All good, I found a place and ordered the oil. So one month later and numerous contact with the supplier had them realising it had been delivered to the wrong address and they couldn't get it back from that person. That's handy. They are now thankfully sending me out another batch and I should receive it in the next week or two.

In the meantime Sonex have released another bulletin requiring the addition of a remote mounted oil filter and a mod to the turbo drain line. So here I go again and no parts suppliers in Australia seem to have this component. I have sent away for the part and the due date is 16th November to land on my doorstep. So let's call this a 2 x month grounding. With the info being tossed around in regard to improvements and so on to avoid melting key components, I am assuming like MGL modules and Aeroconversion trigger modules and engine mounts etc, due to the massive heat soak after shutdown, Sonex are again looking at further improvements in design. With some luck I may be flying after christmas.

So that's that and where I'm at. My plane has been pushed into the corner.

My poor old plane, the Aeropup, has been through the wars of late too. I had a random person contact me about the plane who seemed to be extremely interested. So as one person was keen I thought I'd advertise it while I had some interest. Long story short two lots of different people were keen to look at the plane but as I had it at home where it can't be flown, they asked me to take it out the the airfield and carry out the 100 hourly and get it flying. Well I did all this including trailer hire, temporary hangarage, numerous costs for the annual and parts replacement due and of course avgas.

 So all flying well, took the missus for a fly, contacted the people to tell them it's ready to be viewed and guess what?.. Phones not being answered, txt messages not answered, emails not answered.  Very disappointed. I'm not disappointed about not selling the plane but just in the outright pricks for asking me to do all this work then not even giving me a return call. Anyway,,took the plane home and it can sit in my shed for another year or two as far as I'm concerned. If anyone now thinks they may be interested they can come to my house, view he plane, and if keen, hire a trailer and help me take it out to the field and then fly it. Won't likely happen but that's about all I can offer at the moment.

So okay I'm almost all done with the negative stuff but I do have to put just one more in. I'm certain I have definitely run over a black cat as on one of the last flights I had with the Sonex before the service bulletin releases I has a major leak sprout from the turbo feed line.

Oil had gone everywhere. I was luckily only 5 mins away from the airport when I smelt a massive stink of engine oil suddenly while flying. I made a lowish powered glide approach from about 6 miles out and watched the oil pressure gauge in case it dropped to nothing and landed all ok, taxied back and found thi(see pic).. Consequently I made a a new pipe that afternoon with the guys help from the club and had it running again. There was lots of discussion about how the pipe was unsuitable and so on, due to it being in a vibration high zone and things. Anyway the service bulletin now replaces that exact hose with flexible line so problem solved.

I did however have a bit of a win with some tyres. I was stuck on the ground for ages trying to sort out a tube for the wheels. I have since found out the tyre size is common in the US apparently yet not over here it seems. To cut a long story short I walked into my local tyre shop asking for tubes and he has some tyres there. They turned out to be the exact ones I needed for spares and a replacement. He wanted $50 a tyre. SOLD I said,,, The supplier I had talked to earlier that day could supply them each for $150 plus postage, WINNING,,, anyway another kind builder from over east sent me a second hand tube to get me flying again while I waited for the tubes to arrive for spares. Life was good again. He also sent me this jack for a very modest price. Lightweight and works great. Best thing I've seen for jacking up a plane that can store away for trips and is super light and easy to use. For anyone with a Sonex, I can't help but say this Jack is great.