2005-Feb-23
The 2180 VW as delivered from Great Plains.
2005-Jun-8
Checking free rotation in the engine before finishing the assembly. I followed Great Plains' "Engine Assembly Manual" to the letter. Some numbers:
Bore: 92 mm; Stroke: 82 mm; Swept Volume: 545.1 cc
Head Volume: 46.0 cc (measured with a cover plate and veterinarian's syringe, just like the manual shows)
Deck Height with .177-in shim: .44 mm; Deck Volume: 29.4 cc
Compression Ratio: 8.23:1.
2005-Jul-8
In the background you can see that I'm storing the wings on the fuselage with lumber and clamps. I omitted the wing folding mechanism to save weight and time but probably will build something of my own that will stay in the hangar when I fly.
2005-Jul-8
Finally got the engine finished and mounted. To lift it from my workbench to the fuselage I bought a rope hoist for seven dollars from Harbor Freight and rigged a couple of two-by-fours overhead. Very low budget unless you consider the day of my labor that it consumed.
2005-Jul-17
The intake manifold was made from four 90-degree bends of 1.50-inch diameter x .045 wall tubing, fitted and tacked on the engine then removed for welding. The radius of each bend is 2.25 inches (1.5x diameter) to the tube centerline. The pieces came with the engine kit from Great Plains. Notice that the manifold covers my starter mounting boss. Some time after welding the fuselage for the Diehl accessory case I decided not to use a starter.
At the bottom of the picture are the four 2-3/8-inch-long engine mount spacers.
2005-Sep-9
The cowling with piano hinges installed and fitted to the fuselage. Kinda looks like a toilet bowl to me.
2005-Sep-18
Fitting the firewall inside the cowling. This is a very trial-and-error process. I decided to rivet on the flange instead of forming it integrally. That's why you don't see the flange in this photo.
2006-Jan-15
Inboard wall of the LHS box baffle. It fits between the eighth and ninth fins (counting outward from the case) of the cylinders.
2006-Mar-13
The Aerocarb installation. It took a while but I succeeded in aligning the slider with the long axis of the airplane, although there isn't much room for an air filter. No doubt making that fit will be another boondoggle.
Notice how the intake manifold passes through the space where the starter would be. I decided some time after spending the extra money for the Diehl case that I wasn't going to use an electric starter.
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2006-Mar-13
Top and bottom views of the engine. The flanges on the bottom pan cooling ducts are for connecting 2" SCAT tube to carry the hot air directly to the cowling exit. Note the custom made throttle cable clamp on the Aerocarb.
Front view. Yes, inside the left inlet that is a PVC elbow, part of a home-made bulkhead fitting. On the bottom side 1" SCAT tube will be connected and routed to the oil cooler. Also on the left side notice the apex of the box baffle. Clearance was so tight I had to truncate it! Duct tape may have to be pressed into service until I can make something more elegant.
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2007-Nov-11
Making the cutouts in the spinner. There is no easy way to do this. Take the best measurements you can from the blade, make somewhat smaller cutouts in the spinner, trial fit, use a sharpie to mark the areas where more material must be removed, cut, trial fit, mark, and so on for about a dozen iterations. When it finally fits, sand the edges until they are as smooth as you can make them. The reinforcements were made from leftover .040-inch spar material.
Putting everything together for a trial fit shows that the backplate stands above the cowling by 1/8 inch or so. Why do these things happen to me? I thought I had this aligned perfectly. The solution will be to add shimming washers to the top motor mounts.
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2007-Dec-2
My low brow idea for ventilating the gascolator. Start with a one-quart plastic bottle, cut off the bottom half, wrap the remainder in aluminized heat barrier, and cut two half-inch holes just below the neck for the fuel lines. The screw top is exactly the right size for one-inch SCAT tube. We'll see whether it works.
2008-Jan-13
The damn thing runs! The secondary ignition doesn't work very well yet and I'm working through the idle adjustment, but hey, it runs!
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2008-Mar-26
Wrapping the fuel line with heat shield.
2008-Mar-29
Here's a photo of the no. 3 exhaust valve and rocker, showing how the swivel foot partially misses the valve stem. If I remove shims from under the rocker stands there is less overlap but the rubbing problem with the pushrods gets worse. If I add shims, the rubbing problem is eliminated but the swivel foot moves farther north. I'm thinking about switching to stock 1.1:1 rockers.
2008-May-17
When installed the end of the dipstick is about 3/8-inch above the bottom of the sump and the height of 2-3/4 quarts of oil (with the engine dead level) is about 1.6 inches, so you can see where the oil line on the dipstick should be with respect to the two marks. In case anyone is interested.
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2008-Jul-4
One cooling fin cracked in transit to or from Great Plains. I sent the head to Steve for his advice with the rocker arm setup. "You're being too picky" was it. So I'll put it back together and stop worrying. I found out in the discussion that my rocker arms are in fact 1.1:1.
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2008-Jul-27
The baffles I've been working on for the past couple of weekends. I wasn't happy with the way my homemade top baffles met the stock cooling tins on the bottom, so I deep sixed the tins and made my own. These two photos show the separators for between the cylinders. The bulkhead butts against a similar looking one from the top.
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2008-Jul-27
One of the wrap-around pieces for the ends of the heads.
2008-Aug-24
The second Aerocarb hookup, exactly as prescribed by the manual, with the rigid push-pull cable and rod end bearing. It didn't work very well - too much resistance when trying to advance the throttle. Aeroconversions tech support said a modification to convert the slider to "pull" action (rather than "push") would fix it. Although their price for the mod was reasonable at $50 I decided to try it on my own for the challenge of it.
2008-Aug-24
A peek inside the carb to see whether there was another explanation for the stickiness. Some very minor scoring on the delrin gasket but nothing severe enough to explain any binding. In any case the slider is smooth as silk when the engine is off. It's only while running that it doesn't want to advance. On with the modification.
2008-Sep-01
While it was apart I wet sanded the slider and the gasket with 600 grit paper.
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2008-Sep-14
My homemade modification: first remove the 1/4-inch threaded rod from the slider. Buy a 1/4-inch set screw at the hardware store (in the aircraft parts aisle), captivate it on the end of a bowden cable, and screw it into the slider.
The captivation process goes like this: get a piece of really small brass tubing, cut a small piece of it and put it on the cable. Drill a #55 hole through the set screw and slide it onto the cable. The electrical tape on the drill bit is to help the chuck on my drill press grip it because it's so small. Then use your welder to put a nice, fat ball on the end of the cable. Slide the set screw up against the ball and the tubing against the set screw, then solder the tubing to the cable. The set screw is now stuck on the end of the cable.
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2008-Sep-20
The carb is turned 180 degrees and a cable clamp is fabricated from .035-inch sheet and a small saddle clamp that we threw away at work. The sheet is attached to the end of the carb using the carb housing screws. It's starting to look like it might work.
2008-Oct-11
Back in the cockpit, the cable attachment point on the throttle handle must be moved from above the pivot point to below it so that advancing the throttle causes the cable to pull the slider rather than push it.
A test run in the driveway proves that the pull configuration actually works! To be perfectly honest about it, I would have to admit that the slider still likes to close more than it likes to open when the engine is running, but excessive force is no longer required. I think the problem is solved.
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2008-Oct-07
The beginnings of a duct to channel air from the cowling's smile along the bottom of the engine. I was never happy with the duct work I made earlier from aluminum. I can't finish the project until a hangar becomes available (no room in my garage to attach the wings), so now I'm redoing things.
2009-Jun-8
I'm looking over this page and comparing it to my official notebook and I see there is quite a lot I've omitted, probably because of the frustrating moments. In the hope that reading about my trials may console another builder I'll fill in some details of the past year.
Last spring I struggled with leaky valves after only brief running time. Number three went soft and hissed during hand propping. Then when I pulled the heads I found to my dismay that two valves were loose in their guides. The heads were brand new when purchased, the so called "premium" upgrade from Great Plains, and had run a total of 20 minutes or so. I took them to the local VW shop, which replaced the two guides and reground all the valves and seats. Heads back on the engine, I turned my attention to improving the cooling baffles around the cylinders.
During this time I made a really dumb-assed mistake that set me back quite a bit. With the engine upside down on the engine stand and the secondary ignition module removed (but the pinion still in the hole - mistake!), I turned the prop by hand. It didn't go far before I heard the heartbreaking grinding sound and felt the resistance. What happened was, the pinion, without the module to keep it in place, started to walk up its hole and got stuck. With the pinion still partially engaged with the brass gear and me turning the prop, something had to give. That something was the brass gear teeth. A complete engine disassembly ensued for the purpose of replacing the gear. While it was apart I painted the cylinders using GP's recommended 50/50 mix of paint and gasoline. Also during this time I was fretting over rocker arm alignment, but by the beginning of July the engine was reassembled and I resumed work on the baffles, which kept me busy for another month. There are some photos of this work above.
As I was getting ready to start the engine I made a transfer rig for pre-oiling the case galleries and valve train. It's a one-gallon can with a small pump attached to it. I drain the oil from the sump into the can, then connect the pump discharge to a filter and then to the oil pressure port on the case While the pump is pumping the oil back into the engine I'm turning the prop slowly. With the valve covers removed it's easy to verify that the pushrods are filling with oil.
On August 10 I started the engine for the first time since the valve job. It ran well but there were issues to be solved, including an inoperative secondary ignition and a sticky Aerocarb slider. The ignition turned out to be fairly easy to fix. On page 38 of the Great Plains manual, step 4 should read rotate the housing COUNTERCLOCKWISE until the light goes out. You can rotate it clockwise until the light goes out but your timing will be off by about 90 degrees, which is what happened to me. This of course was discovered only after a protracted period of head scratching.
The sticky Aerocarb was not subdued quite so easily but you can read about that starting with the Aug 24 entry above. By October I pronounced it fixed, tentatively. I say "tenatively" because I ran it only once in the pull configuration. It was while starting the engine for a second test run that I discovered that one of the cylinders, number two this time, had gone dead soft and gave a nice loud hiss out the exhaust pipe when I pulled it through. At this point I was absolutely disgusted. Thirty minutes of run time between valve jobs will not be acceptable! To get my mind off the engine I finished the bottom duct
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Then over the winter I worked on storage cradles for the wings when the garage was warm enough, and nothing at all when it wasn't. When spring came I began work on the wheel pants.
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2009-Jun-8
Back to the present. Resuming work on the engine, I pulled the heads to lap the valves and snapped these photos. Number two exhaust, the one that leaked last fall, is the worst (top right), but others, even some intake seats, are rusty as well. Had I done this job in October I doubt whether I would have seen visible rust yet. It must have accummulated over the winter, from which I learn that lapping will be a spring ritual.
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2009-Jun-8
Tools of the trade. It wasn't until after my wrist was good and sore from twisting that I hit upon the electric screwdriver idea. All that's needed to connect it to the valve stem is a short length of hose. The spring compression tool is a generic item from the auto parts store. When I have to do this again I may make a custom pry-bar-type tool.