Exhaust is Installed

My In-laws were in town over the weekend and what better way to enjoy Labor Day weekend than installing exhaust on an IO-540 engine. OK...I can think of a lot of things that would have been more fun but it was still a good time hanging out in the shop and tinkering around on the plane. With help from my Father In-law we casually worked on the exhaust from start to finish in just a couple days. The job was pretty easy and it felt great starting and finishing a section in such a short amount of time.

Sat and Sun 30-31 -4.0hrs- Started and finished the exhaust.

Pretty easy section. Followed the plans with no surprises or issues.    ....doesn't the engine looks much cooler with the exhaust on?!

The heat muff is suspended from brackets and rubber linkages. It's easy to figure out once everything starts coming together. It was a lot of help having an extra set of hands for all the Adel clamps and such.

You just follow the numbers for each cylinder and everything starts lining up.

I was concerned about the clearance between the fuselage and the cowling. There are plenty of ways to tweak the position of the exhaust and I'm happy with the clearance I got on both sides. Once everything is installed I was surprised how solid everything is. You can shake the plane by pulling on the heat muff.

Here is the shop lead technician hard at work! (note the tools hanging from her pockets).

She had to inspect my work. It was approved!...whew.