I'm afraid, I'm going to have to name this post "The Good, The Bad & The Ugly". . . . ..
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First off, "The Good" - I took these pictures to help keep me motivated.
I was really starting to get motivated by the time I took the last picture, but my motivation didn't last long. . . . .
"The Bad". At this point in my day, things started to go awry. After I temporarily mounted the engine, I tried to install the cowl and I could not get the cowl high enough to bolt it to the fuselage. As it turned out, the bottom of the cowl was hitting the bottom of the velocity stack on the carburetor. I then began to wonder if it would be OK to just remove the velocity stack and run the engine without it. Then . . . . . . . .
"The Ugly" Can be simply described by two similar, but drastically different dimensions - 6-3/8" and 7". Most of you already know where this is going, but I'm going to type it out for it's comical value. I decided that before I remove the velocity stack, I would remove the engine, install the cowl and measure the distance from the front of the firewall to the front of the cowl. That distance was, you guessed it, 6-3/8". The length of the engine from the rear of the mounting flange to the front of the drive plate is 7". . . . .
. Therefore, the firewall is going to have to be moved back if I want to use this engine. . . . . .
. The question for you guys is, how far back do I move it? If I move it back 5/8", obviously the back of the prop will hit the cowl. Most every plane I've seen has less than 1/8" between the cowl and the spinner and some even less than that. My dilemma is that I read quite an extensive assembly thread on FG about this plane and it was recommended that I leave 1/4" between the front of the cowl and the back of the prop. The reasoning was to help air to get around the cowl. Other than looking odd, do you guys think a 1/4" gap will be excessive?
I have to stop typing now, my fingers are tired. . . . . .
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