Note: I had to remake the bracket that angles down at the front. It was holding the floor too tall to meet up with the bottom of the nose bowl air inlet.
Here is the bottom side of the left baffle floor showing how it sits on the
support brackets:
Note: I had to remake the bracket that angles down at the front. It
was holding the floor too tall to meet up with the bottom of the nose bowl
air inlet.
The part of the baffle system that wraps around behind the flywheel is two pieces that overlap each other at the center and attach to the bracket on the top center of the engine as previously shown. There was some trimming needed here and there to make this part fit the engine and the floors.
Here you can see the angle brackets that attach the front baffles to the
floors:
This why you need to make sure the floors are bent down enough to clear
the bottom of the air inlets on the nose bowl before you install this part
of the system. Once you install these brackets and the ones attaching
the floors to the side baffles, the floors are locked in position.
The final piece of business was to trim the top of this front baffle so the
top cowling can fit back in place and have the required 1/2" clearance. It
was basically trimmed straight across the top and the fit was fairly good:
Note that I had to add a couple of pieces to make the floors and the top
of the front baffle seal properly with the nose bowl. These baffles
were designed to fit Van's RV series airplanes so some modification was required
to make it fit the Bearhawk nose bowl. The idea is to have no more
that a 1/2" gap anywhere between the baffle system and the cowl or nose bowl.
That 1/2" gap will then be filled, using the fabric baffle seal that goes
along the top side.
At this point, I will remove all of the baffles, thoroughly smooth and debur all edges and holes (very important), and then rivet all brackets in place.
Before final riveting the left front floor, I want to "beef" it up a bit
to support the weight of the oil cooler. I started by tracing and making
a doubler for the floor out of .032" aluminum. The doubler will be added
to the original floor for a combined thickness of .064":
Note that I already cut the opening for the oil cooler. To find
the correct location, the oil cooler was held in place under the baffle (while
the baffle was in place on the engine) to obtain the best location with maximum
clearance. The outline of the oil cooler was then traced onto the baffle
floor. The opening was then figured and cut out.
A couple of additional angles were added to support the the weight of the
oil cooler, one on the side baffle and one under the front of the oil cooler
as shown by the arrows in the picture below:
Note that the angle along the side, ties into the reinforcement piece
near the attachment screw at the top. The bolts in the picture above
are just temporary hardware store bolts. The real ones are on order
along with some steel tube to use as spacers between the top and bottom flanges
of the oil cooler.
Here is the top view with the oil cooler installed (with temporary bolts
for now):
The head raiser in front of the cylinder was later removed (see next picture).
I will leave it off until I do some test flying to see if its needed
or not.
The nosebowl was slipped in place to check the floor heights. Looking
pretty good so far:
Proto 1 has a 7 row oil cooler on the front baffle floor. Mine is a
9 row, so I was worried about the fit. The 9 row oil cooler just barely fits,
but there is clearance between the nose bowl and the cooler with enough room
for the fittings and hoses (which are on order):
