Engine Mount Covers

The engine mount covers from Aerosport, I think, are important. They do a great job sealing the plenum around the engine mount that protrudes through the baffle. I had trouble installing the LH cover, though. I wish the flanges were double the size on the covers and this issue could have been avoided, but others have installed them with no issues (such is life). After installing the cover I realized that the nutplates were going to hit the mount, not good. So, I drilled them out and moved them. But I still wasn't happy with how close they were. So, I decided to add a flange to the mount covers. Basically, I made a ring that attaches to the cover plate and then screws into the baffles allowing the nutplates to have plenty of distance from the engine mount. Problem fixed.

Cowl Pin Covers

I got the cowl pin covers installed. They are easy; just follow the instructions from Aerosport.

The cowl pin covers look really nice!

Oil Door

You have to make the oil inspection door on the top of the cowling. The kit gives you a thin piece of fiberglass that becomes the top of the door, but you have to build the hinge and add material for strength, etc. Basically, I didn't even follow the directions for this entire part.

First, I bent a piece of 0.060" aluminum to match the compound curves in the oil door lid. This will act as the structural reinforcement of the door so the door won't bend out from the high pressure engine plenum.

Second, I epoxied the doubler to the door top.

I then started making the hinge. I wanted a hidden hinge for two reasons: it looks nicer and it provides a stop so the door skin doesn't come in contact with the cowling skin (think paint damage).

I used a hidden hinge I found on Mcmaster Carr. I cut most of the hinge part off and remade my own. Then bent legs were really the part I wanted anyway. This custom design allowed me to add a couple torsion springs; they aren't strong enough to open the door but they do keep the door propped up once it is open.

Once I got the dimensions and placement of the hinges figured out it was pretty easy.

Here you can see how the hinge itself provides the stop for the door.

The Camloc KM-610 latch heads are too shallow to protrude through the thick door so I decided to make new thicker latch heads. I drilled holes in a thick piece of aluminum to match the head of the latch and taped them in place.

I also drilled a few holes in the latch top itself so the epoxy will flow down in the holes giving a good solid connection.

I then filled the holes with epoxy.

After sanding the extra epoxy off I popped out the latches. New thicker button heads!

I made some stainless steel latch plates and riveted them in place.

When the oil door closes the latches clasp on the plates.

Here you can see a close up of the finished button heads for the latches. Now I just need a little body work around the edge of the cowling and the oil door is done!

Cowl Flap Wiring and Heat Shield

Once the cowl flaps were figured out and installed I worked on running wires to them. The wires run along the inside of the engine cowling (think high heat, vibration, grease, fuel, etc) so the first thing I wanted to do was seal the fiberglass. I used straight epoxy and just spread it around the entire inside of the cowling with a squeegee. After the epoxy was dry I painted the cowling with some high temp engine paint. Now that the fiberglass was sealed I placed a heat shield material on the cowling in the areas of the exhaust.  

I connected the wires with small #4 screws and ring terminals. I then placed heat shrink around the connection.

The wires were then taped down using smaller pieces of the heat shield. I also spread some fire barrier caulk around the wires to help protect them against heat and wear.

Here you can see how the wires travel along the cowling under the tape.

Here is the finished product. The heat shielding is sealed around the edges. Also, you can see the connector for the cowl flaps in the top RH of the cowling. The connectors is placed there so its easy to disconnect the power and remove the lower cowling. With the compound curves the heat shielding was kind of a pain to install. I had to make a couple layers overlap, but I'm happy with the final product.

Cowl Flaps

The stock plans for the RV-10 have you install a set of louvers on each side of the lower cowl. Which work well, but not great. The RV-10 tends to be limited in its climb rate by its CHT's (Cylinder Head Temperatures). You don't want you CHT's to rise above 400F.

As an airplane climbs less air makes it through the plenum to cool the engine and your temps rise. When the temps rise to that magic number you have to push the nose down to allow more air in and the nose down attitude also will slow your climb rate. In many other airplanes you are limited by your climb rate by the shear performance of the aircraft....it just doesn't have it, think Cessna 172. So you eek up into the sky at a lousy 500 fpm (feet per minute) taking forever to even make it to a decent cruise altitude of 9 or 10 thousand feet. The RV-10, as I said above, is limited by its CHT's. With cool CHT's this plane will climb at a pitch attitude most would find unnerving....it has the performance. The cowl flaps allow you to increase the air flow through the engine compartment by increasing the size of the airflow's exit area during a climb. The large exit area will slow you down in a level cruise attitude though, so you need a way to close the cowl flaps for cruise which is why these are motorized.

I was thinking of making my own cowl flaps - creating the design, making the parts, the work, the research, the hastle, etc. When Anti Splat Aero came out with a generic cowl flap for the RV market. I decided to not waste more time designing things for the plane and instead find a way to incorporate their flap into the RV-10.

With no evidence that a set of cowl flaps will improve the CHT's and thus the climb performance of the RV-10 I'm really feeling experimental. I hope that they do. Most high performance airplanes have them, so why not the RV-10. If I can get a steady, constant climb of 1500fpm I will be happy.

First I had to find a good place to install them. I wanted to stay near the spot that Vans had designed for their louvers. It turns out that with the curve of the cowling I didn't have much choice anyway. So I cut the holes in bottom of the cowling.

The cowl flaps hang lower than the cowling so they need to be spaced up. I also wanted the spacers to be a structural reinforcement of the cowling. I created two square "frames" from 0.125" 2024-T3 aluminum plate that will reinforce the large holes in the cowling and act as a spacer under the flaps.

One of the frames painted with high temp paint.

I had to add shims to the bottom of the frames and round its edge so it sits flush to the curves of the cowling. I even cut the corner off to help with the clearance.

The frames installed and riveted in place.

Unfortunately the cowl flaps come with pre-drilled holes in it's flanges. I used the holes as a guide to drill the pattern in the frames. Then I opened the holes in the cowl flap flange up to clear the tails of the frames rivets.

I installed a set of three nutplates on each side (6 total per flap). I used Vans center support plate as a guide since I want to use that part later. Note the notch cut out of the outboard flap side walls. This was cut to clear the exhaust.

Here is a picture showing the reason for the notch. I also took the weight of the front wheel (flight configuration) to check for clearance on the landing gear while it sags without the weight of the aircraft. I had a 0.5" clearance from the gear to the inboard flap side wall.

This is the center support plate from Vans. I had to add a lot of spacers due to all the additional material stackup in the lower cowling.

The Vans center support bracket is the blue piece in the top LH side of the pic. I made a new center support bracket form Stainless Steel. It's a little bit shorter than the the stock one due to the stackup of material. Plus this will hold the additional weight, what little bit there is, a lot better than the stock aluminum. I also had to open the center V notch in the support plate by quite a bit. I don't think this had anything to do with my cowl flap mod but it was a bit more work with such a thick amount of material. As a note I had to cut it past the first hole closest to the notch. I added another rivet hole centered between the remaining two. 

I also had to trim the nose landing gear pant to clear the center support bracket assembly. All of this would vary depending on where you cut your lower cowling, mine is flush with the rest of the cowling per the plans.

And here they are installed. The three outboard screws on each side screw into nutplates mounted on the cowl flaps outboard flange and will stay installed even during cowling removal. The three inboard screws on each side screw into nutplates mounted on the center support plate in a similar manner to the plans, they just go through a lot of material to get there.

To remove the cowling you just unscrew the same six screws as normal from the center support plate.

Here is a shot with them open. You can see how the cowl flaps almost double the exit area. Also, with the frame structure and stainless center support the entire exit area is pretty rigid. I feel very confident in the structure.

Another shot with the flaps open. The notch looks pretty cool, I think.

Here is a video of the flaps opening. -With my 2 year old commentating...sort of :)

And here is a video of them closing.

Upper Air Ramps

Since you have to create a large cutout in the LH upper air ramp for the prop governor I wanted to closeout the area with fiberglass. This is mainly to prevent backflow of pressure in the upper cowling intake plenum which helps force air down between the cylinders and thus keeps the engine cool.

-Times recorded on previous post.

I started by spraying in some expandable foam into the air ramps that were previously glassed in and cut. The foam is a high temp flame retardant expanding foam....and expand it does! You can see the volcanic eruptions that took place overnight on one of the ramps.

The foam was cut down and shaped, then filled with thickened epoxy. Then a few layers of glass were laid over it to stiffen everything up. Unfortunately the foam kept producing bubbles in the glass making this a lot more work then I expected.

Ayla thought is was really cool to play in the plane!

Service Bulletin, Standby Alternator, Baffle Install, Re-clocked Prop Governor

I have done A LOT since my last post.

- Completed Service Bulletin 14-08-29

- Installed the Standby Alternator

- Painted and installed baffles

- Reclocked my Prop Governor

- Measured for my fluid lines

- Body work on upper air ramps (Featured on later post)

- Installed cowl flaps (Featured on later post)

- Started routing my #2 wire

Dates and Times

Sept

20 -4.5hrs-

21 -5.0hrs-

22 -1.25hrs-

23 -1.25hrs-

24 -1.0hrs-

25 -1.0hrs-

26 -8.25hrs-

27 -3.0hrs-

28 -5.5hrs-

Oct

1 -1.0hrs-

3 -7.5hrs-

4 -3.5hrs-

5 -5.5hrs-

The service bulletin from Vans has you install a spacer plate between the engine mount elastomer plate and the elastomer itself. I scratched my head for a while trying to think of the best way to get the weight off the front gear so I could remove the elastomers. I first thought, and will probably do from now on since the prop would add even more weight, pulling down on the tail to raise the nose. I personally can hang from the tip of the tail and can't get the nose off the ground so any kind of weight system would need to be really big and I didn't want to hassle with that right now, I will go this route for maintenance after flying though. So I just used one of the bottle jacks I put together a while back and with some plates to help distribute the load I carefully raised the nose. Worked....but made me nervous.

The spacer plate is designed to space the elastomers off the welds of the gear. My elastomers were bent from the welds so I cut the bends out so nothing would rub in the future.....and that is why they have the spacer now.

I installed my Plane Power FS1-14B backup alternator (30Amps) on the engine "vacuum pad". Also you can see some of the tubing I'm using to measure for my fluid lines.

After I got the baffles installed I noticed that the Aerosport Mount Cover nutplates rub against my engine mount. I wish the flanges were 3 times the size on the mount covers and this would never be an issue. I'm going to have to drill these out and figure out a solution.....really not happy about this one.

Baffles painted and installed....just need to install the baffle material.

I'm real happy with the way my RH ramp turned out. Kinda looks like I know what I'm doing.

I had to re-clock my prop governor control arm so the control cable will be able to fully actuate the governor. Then I re-safety wire it.