Before I forget all the details, I need to document last winter’s excitement with my brand new engine. One year after receiving my TMX IO-360 from Mattituck, ECI quietly released AD 2009-26-12 during the holidays. (Merry Christmas to you too!) It turns out my zero-time engine had four cylinders within the effected serial number range, so they had to be replaced. Uhg! The supposed good news the engine was not installed on the RV-7 yet, but still on the shipping create — one of the few benefits of building really slow. So on Jan 17th, 2010, I just sealed the box back up and took it to the local freight depot for shipping back to Mattituck. They handled the return of the cylinders to ECI. The new cylinders were shipped to Mattituck for installation. Then they ran the engine for another couple hours in the test cell. I heard ECI gave some people a hard time about replacement cylinders, wanting to rework the existing cylinders instead of replacing them. ECI assured me I was getting “new nickel” cylinders, not reworked. I checked the serial numbers when the engine was returned to confirm this. By late March my engine was back in the basement waiting to be installed on the plane.
I reached the point in the canopy construction where it says to start cutting the actual plexiglass. Given that it’s the middle of winter and the temps in the basement are only in the 50′s, I decided to postpone further canopy work and move on to the fitting on the empennage. Everything fit with no surprises. The digital level and tape measure assured everything was lined up properly and had the proper travel.
Instead of the exterior rudder stops made from AL angle, I installed this internal stop made from Delrin. I bought it quite a while ago from Jeff Bordelon. I’m not sure if he still sells them. Right is a view of the rudder stop from the bottom, looking up. In the background you can see the front spar of the rudder and the three extra rivets I added to account for the minimum edge distance after the front spar was shortened by 5/8“, per the plans.
While fitting the fiberglass tips to the elevators, I had to dimple the outboard edges. The dimples at the trailing edge are tough because its so narrow in that area. I was able to do a decent job by using a normal dimple die, paired with a pop-rivet die, a hardwood wedge & small sledge hammer. This worked well enough, but when it came time to pull the rivets in those same holes, it was too crowed to even insert the rivet after the opposite one had been set. So I ended up just filling that hole with proseal.
I used an epoxy soaked cardboard rib to hold the shape of forward fiberglass tips. The vertical stabilizer tip didn’t really match the profile of the rudder until I shimmed it a little and let the rib cure in place.
Then I thought I would be fancy and add some carbon fiber over the end to dress it up. I would leave the end unpainted and it would just be cool to look at — just like any else carbon fiber! The tips are shown here curing with a layer of fiberglass and a layer of carbon fiber. They didn’t turn out exactly perfect and I ended up filling the imperfections with microballons and gray primer. If I were to do it again, I would get some samples from DragonPlate and use those.
Finally, while fitting the enpennage control surfaces, I had to adjust the rod end bearings to the correct depth. I still had a modified socket from the RV-8 that I could use on the one larger REB on on the bottom of the rudder, but it didn’t work on the remaining smaller REB’s. So following Sam’s lead, I made another one from some spare PVC. Works great!
I received my Whirlwind 200RV prop on schedule. I got it as part of the VAF group buy last spring. Very nice looking. I had a non-blended airfoil Hartzell on the RV-8 and it was fine, but I’m expecting to like this one even more.
I liked the Infinity grip in our RV-8, so I am going to do the same in the RV-7. I fit it to the stick after cutting off 3.75″, so the overall length of the stick is unchanged. The switches behind the blue and green buttons were swapped to match what I had on the RV-8 (on/off vs momentary). I put a 5/16″ socket in the vertical lathe (drill press) and machined down to .41″ diameter to get to the nut on each switch. Later, I’ll consolidate all ground wires inside the grip to minimize size of wire bundle exiting the grip.
Several people have reminded me lately how much I suck at keeping this site updated. I have to admit it’s true, sometimes. Despite this, I have been making some progress on the plane.
