Engine mount finalization

After the mount was fully welded by our local (top bloke) L.A.M.E I took it home, took all the old paint off, rubbed it back, primed and painted it.  It did take a reasonable amount of time but it was so rewarding to have a mount that would work. 

I did look into buying a mount from Sonex but by the time I managed to get it into the country I would be looking at well over $4000 for the thing. It was not my first preference to make the mount myself but if I was to be able to afford this conversion then I had to be a realist and look for a more economical solution. 

I am so pleased how it all turned out. I can't thank the guys enough that all helped to make this possible for me. It was good to sit back and let the experience of the other guys play out, watch and learn how it all came to pass.

Swapping over engines

I have been working rather tirelessly on this conversion. Pictures never portray the hours of work involved with these things but hopefully if someone ever does follow this in the endeavour to do a conversion like this they will gain a decent appreciation of what took place.

I've been a bit worried about the plane being tail heavy when I finish so I have moved the motor forward about 22 mm or 7/8 " forward for you gunslingers who still use the imperial system. Hopefully with the weight of everything installed like the oil tanks, radiators and so on, plus moving the engine forward, it will enable to me to keep my existing long range Aux tank behind the seat.

The engine was test fit onto the jog just to see how it would attach to the original Aerovee mount.

For a while there I thought the mount may have been able to be incorporated into the new engine fitment. I did try to use bits from the donor plane mount and the original mount and do some sort of grafting onto each other but it soon became apparent that this was going to be a foolish idea and we needed to basically start from scratch.

We did keep the section of the mount that retained the landing gear legs and so on but all the rest was cut off and we started planning the new mount.

I bought a healthy amount of chrome moly tube and we set to work. The bonus of the engine being in the exact right spot enabled us to make the mount piece by piece and allow for the starter ,carbs, hoses and ancillaries, giving them ample room while sticking to the design plan we all agreed on for strength.

The last picture is the engine mount all basically tacked together before it was removed for final welding and painting. The actual engine attach points were retained from the old mount and the rubber bushings also used. It worked well on the previous engine so we stuck with that method.

And so it begins

Well I haven't been mucking around in regard to this conversion. I have had a bit of help for all the planning and so on behind it. We had quite a successful weekend and it's sort of in place on the Sonex.

The jig is basically there to keep the prop hub in the correct position as per the old hub. A friend had also made up some spacers I could use to allow the engine to come forward or backwards via shims and to be able to position it correctly for the weight and balance. We’ll see how that all works out. 

So it looks like the Aerovee engine mounts had actually worn through again. I am a little surprised,  after all the work we did making the mount square and running new bushes. Anyway that's now a thing of the past. We have some plans for the new mount so hopefully this will never occur again.