Skip to main content

She's almost done!

I went out to the airport again yesterday to check on the progress and take some more pictures. When I arrived, the engine was already mounted and the mechanic was getting close to finishing the job of hooking everything up. I chatted with him and also with Preston. I'll summarize the current status.

The annual is complete. There were a couple of things that need to be fixed, but overall it wasn't bad at all. The most expensive thing is the nose wheel that I described in my previous post. The tire and tube also need replacing, and they already have them ready to go for when the replacement wheel arrives. The main gear tires were replaced a couple years ago, shortly before I bought the plane, so now it's the nose tire's turn.

There's a bracket that holds one of the pilot-side brake master cylinders that needs to be replaced. It's a very simple thing that they can fabricate on the spot. If I understood correctly, there's a reinforcement plate behind the firewall where one of the engine mount bolts goes that needs to be replace, also something they can fabricate easily. Other than that, it's all good.

The bolts holding the engine to the mount are the old ones which they're using for now to hold in place, but they will be replaced with new ones. I think he said the same for the bolts holding the mount to the firewall.

There are no guarantees, of course, but it's possible it will be done sometime this week. If not, it'll probably be done the following week. Regardless, I think I'll take week after next off from work and, hopefully, I'll be able to get some good break-in time in. Assuming the weather cooperates, of course.

Seeing that engine mounted on my plane, I felt that it was finally real, that I was within sight of the end of this long and frustrating wait. Fingers crossed everything will work out over the next two weeks.

Here are some pictures:

First, here's the nose wheel. Though it's not quite in focus, you can see where the crack is; it's on the side of the hole where one of the bolts that holds the two halves together screws in.

Here are some photos of the engine from various angles. The mechanic is visible in a couple of them.








Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

My engine is so pretty

I went out to the shop today to take a few pictures of my engine and plane before the engine is remounted. The baffling and some other stuff has already been attached to the engine. The engine mount is not back yet. Since the nose gear is attached to the engine mount, the plane is currently sitting on the main gear, and a couple of supports just behind the firewall, and under the tail. Here are a few of the photos I took. The engine looks lovely, to me at any rate, especially since I know those are new cylinders.
2 comments
Read more

Flying when you must

The previous post was titled "Flying when you can." Today the weather was so nice that there was no question about whether or not I'd go up. Today is Saturday, and if you have weather this nice on the weekend, at this time of year, you can't not go flying if it's at all possible. I'll probably go tomorrow, too. I hope so. With the work that was done during and after the annual inspection, my plane is finally fully functional. As far as I know, everything on it works. The intercom is even behaving itself, with a distinct lack of loud static during the last couple of flights. The shop didn't say if they did anything specific to fix it but either they did when I last asked them to take a look at it, or it's somehow sorted itself out. Hopefully it will work just fine, at least until I decide to replace the audio panel with one that has the intercom built in. As noted above, the weather today was absolutely gorgeous. I flew north out of Harvey Field up past...
1 comment
Read more

Night flying

One of the things I've wanted to do since I got current is to go up at night with an instructor for a refresher flight. While I can't do that in my airplane, I can still do it on one of the flight school's planes so I made a reservation for this evening to spend some time with an instructor in a 172. While the weather looked a bit iffy, it was good enough to go flying. I met my instructor at the appointed time, 7:00pm local time. The first thing we did was go out and perform the preflight inspection on the plane while there was sufficient daylight. After that, we spent about half an hour or so in his office going over the things to be aware of when flying at night. Once that was done, we walked out to the plane, got in, started it up, and headed out. We headed north for a while as we discussed the unique aspects of piloting and navigating at night. For example, using the horizon as an attitude reference, and recognizing the presence of poor weather conditions. The weather i...
1 comment
Read more