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 February 3, 2021

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Baffles
The Engine Baffles play a very important part in cooling the engine. They basically make sure that the cooling air is forced to flow down through the engine cooling fins correctly. I bought the baffle kit from Van's and it has helped a lot but there is still a lot of trimming and fitting that has to be done.
February 13, 2003 - 4 hours
Finished the baffle seals on the engine baffles and spent the rest of the time trying to figure out how to seal around the inlets. I drilled the seal material for the inlets.

December 8, 2003 - 2.2 hours
Started on the engine cooling baffles. I managed to get the four pieces that make up the side walls trimmed and fitted.

Here are the side baffles pretty well fit to the engine.

December 9, 2003 - 1.75 hours
Worked on the rear baffles a little bit. The one on the left doesn't fit well at all and I am having a hard time figuring out exactly how it is supposed to go in there.

The rear baffle meets the flange near the motor mount at an angle. If I trim it around the motor mount I will have to take off a lot of material. I think I'll just build a small, tapered spacer for that thing.

December 10, 2003 - 3 hours
Finished trimming the left rear bulkhead and started on the right inlet floor.

December 11, 2003 - 3 hours
I worked on the right front inlet some more and once I had it all drilled I started working on the right one.

December 12, 2003 - 3.5 hours
More trimming and tweaking on the baffles.

December 13, 2003 - 4 hours
Still more trimming and tweaking on the baffles. I have most of the forward right part trimmed and I am starting on the left side. I'll have a lot of riveting to do once I get them all to fit right.

December 15, 2003 - 2 hours
I'm pretty much finished fitting the front parts of the baffles. Now all I need to do is get the back parts tweaked and then I can start trimming them to fit the top cowling.

This is the left front inlet area.

Here you can see the reinforcement plate where the two front sections bolt to the crankcase bracket.

Right front inlet area.

December 16, 2003 - 2 hours
Finished trimming the rear baffle parts so that they would fit just right over the top of the engine. I drilled the hole in the rear baffle sections to the crankcase bracket. I also added a piece of angle to the right rear section instead of the bent flange that comes with the part.

This is the left rear baffle section. You can see the little spacer that I made.

The original part had a bent flange here, but it did not fit well so I cut it off and replaced it with this piece of angle.

This is a picture of how the right rear baffle bolts to the crankcase. It doesn't fit real well I may cut it off and make my own.

December 20, 2003 - 1.4 hours
Started trimming the baffles to fit the top cowling.

I used some scrap that had evenly spaced holes to hold the top cowling above the bottom cowling a fixed amount. I think this is about 1 1/2"

While I had the top cowling spaced above the bottom cowling I reached in everywhere I could and put these little posterboard pointers all around. Now all I have to do is to measure down 1 1/2" from the tips of these pointers and that should give me a line that is pretty close to the bottom surface of the top cowling. It worked okay, but I still had a lot of trimming to do.

December 21, 2003 - 7 hours
I just about have the baffles trimmed to fit the cowling now. They still need a little tweaking in the area around the inlets though and I am right at 3/8" all the way around so I may have to carve on them a little bit more.

December 23, 2003 - 1.1 hours
Spent most of the evening scratching my head. I am having trouble figuring out how to seal the baffles to the inlet ducts. I think I'm gonna do some more fiberglass on the ducts but for now I'm going inside to look at other's websites.

January 3, 2004 - 5 hours
Trimmed the front of the baffles to fit the new inlet ducts that I glassed into the top cowling. I also riveted on most of those little mounting hole doublers and some of the reinforcement angles for the baffles.

January 4, 2004 - 5.5 hours
After getting the cowling back on after the whole adding inlet duct seals thing I decided that most of the baffles needed a little more trimming. I also cut the hole for the oil cooler and drilled the oil cooler doubler plate to the back baffle. I made some reinforcements for the oil cooler to (hopefull) keep it from cracking the back baffles.

January 10, 2004 - 1.75 hours
Drilled the flange for the cabin heat to the baffle and riveted it on with the stainless screen.

Rear looking view of the cabin heat inlet.

This is the back of the right aft baffle where the cabin heat flange is mounted.

January 11, 2004 - 3 hours
Started fitting the rubber baffle seal material to the baffles. I also made the hose for the return fuel line and drilled the hole in the baffle for it to pass through.

This is the doubler plate for oil cooler.

This is the fuel inlet to the AFP purge valve. The other end of this hose is the outlet of the fuel servo.

The seal material is going on quite nicely. This is trickier than I thought it would be but it's not so bad.

The grommet in the rear baffle is where the purge line will pass through on it's way to the bulkhead fitting on the firewall.

January 12, 2004 - 1 hours
Put on some more baffle seal material.

January 13, 2004 - 1 hours
Riveted the baffle seal material on the front left baffle.

January 14, 2004 - 1.5 hours
Riveted the rear left baffle sections together and started cutting the baffle seal material.

February 12, 2004 - 3 hours
Still working on the rubber seal material for the baffles.

February 14, 2004 - 1.5 hours
Riveted the seal material to the bottom cowling half. I think the baffles are finished but I am going to wait a little before I install them permanently just in case I need to take them off for some reason.

This is how I intend to secure the hinge pin along the side of the bottom cowling.

The rubber on the bottom cowling. I may cut some of the excess off, but I want to see how if fits.

This shows the detail of how I backed up the rivets holding the seal material to the bottom cowling.

March 14, 2004 - 0.5 hours
I pulled the cowling off and finished bolting the baffles to the engine.

This is how the bottom of the baffles are tied together. It's just 030 safety wire run through a couple of washers.

I added a little bit of support to the rear baffle in the hope that it would help keep the baffles from cracking around the oil cooler mount.

April 4, 2004 - 5 hours
Removed the prop and stored it away. I will probably wait until the airplane is at the hangar to put it back on. I had to go back and fix something that I missed on the baffle. The rear left part of the baffle needs to have an added piece of angle reinforcement when using the baffle mount oil cooler like I am. This was pointed out to me by a couple of guys through email. BTW thanks guys for the notes and if anybody else sees something in these pictures that could be a problem, please don't think that I will be offended if you point them out to me. That is part of the reason that I have this website.

This is the angle reinforcement that I had to redo. On the baffle. The seal material really doesn't look that bad, I promise.

April 5, 2004 - 0.5 hours
I still needed to safety wire the bottom of the new baffle piece on so I did that.

Disclaimer:
This web site and the infomation contained within it are for entertainment purposes only. The opinions expressed on construction techniques are my opinions only and should not be confused with proper construction techniques. There is undoubtedly more than one way to build an airplane and some methods that I use may or may not work in any given circumstance. If there is any question please call the kit manufacturer. I love to help but I am not responsible for the misuse of any information contained on this web site.

 February 3, 2021
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