Well, while the parts are out we have a number of things to do.  We'll pull the motor mount and clean that up, reshape our new nose bowl, check the hoses, inspect most everything up front and see what we can find to fix.  I'm thinking since the airplane is mostly apart, this is also a good time for an annual.

Engine Mount

Disconnecting all the hoses, wires, and assorted paraphernalia from the engine mount only took a few days... lots-o-connections there.  I'm almost positive that these connections will find their back without any problem.  Only four bolts to hold the entire engine on.  Humm... interesting, that.  And even better!... the bottom two bolts hold the front flying wires on too.  Now, we're going to have to adjust the flying wires again.  Note: Apprehension about getting this all back together growing rapidly!

Anyway, we took the mount and some miscellaneous parts to the sandblaster and got them cleaned up.  A little paint and we're ready for the engine!... well, when it comes back anyway.

Cylinder Heads

Cylinder heads were stripped of paint, washed, sandblasted, and inspected.  It took many hours to get all the carbon out of the cylinders and ports.  The nice part about fine grain sand is you can't hurt much... on the other hand, it takes forever to get everything down to the metal.  Looks good in the end though.  This thing ought to run tons better!

Jayson was a bit concerned about one of the cylinders and the valves.  Rather than mess with it, I shipped to Don George Aircraft in Orlando.  Not really happy about the potential repair cost.  I hadn't really counted on doing anything to the cylinders.

Pistons and Rings

Pistons were sandblasted and inspected.  Rings were just inspected and, finding nothing interesting about them, tossed.  We'll put in a new set of rings.

Miscellaneous Parts

All the small parts that we didn't ship to be looked at were washed, sandblasted, and inspected.  We wanted to take some of the parts to the plating shop to get them plated.  We thought gold tinted plating would look awfully nice with a black engine.

Plating... ala Kade

Well the plating idea was a good one... trouble is, people want a small fortune to plate a few parts.  Not only that, but they are talking 8-10 weeks turnaround.  Well, that wasn't good at all.  So we decided to give it a go ourselves.  Kade has plated parts before, but not necessarily yellow cadmium.  So he got all the materials and practiced a little before he did the real thing.  After plating, the parts were baked at 375 for 4-6 hours to relieve the hydrogen embrittlement.  For some reason they looked great until they were baked, but then they turned blackish... Hummm.  Well, paint doesn't look all that bad!!  ;-)

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