FFS. I need a new hobby.

eman1200 said:
is that dude looking for his 10mm socket?
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With Jim's luck it probably fell, unnoticed, into a cylinder through a spark plug hole... :eek:

Seriously though, Jim, that engine looks great! I can't wait to hear about your test flight. Nice work!
 
Chains cracked the paint on the lifting eyes.
 
JimBirk said:
With Jim's luck it probably fell, unnoticed, into a cylinder through a spark plug hole...
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Like when I dropped a nut that bounced off my hand and went into this hole? (But, I did notice...)
Adds new meaning to the phrase "Put a sock in it."
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Albany Tom said:
A - Congrats!!!
B - You need to sell that photo to Harbor Freight. That's the most expensive thing that's ever been hung off of one of those...
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The fun part is, it looks like only the hydraulic ram is HF, the actual cherry picker looks more robust and has probably been around a while!
 
So with the thing that makes the noise glued to the thing with the people in it, what are the next steps to get this thing back up in the air?
 
Albany Tom said:
So with the thing that makes the noise glued to the thing with the people in it, what are the next steps to get this thing back up in the air?
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We spent monday afternoon and Tuesday wiring and plumbing. Takes longer than you'd think. Prop should go on today (Wed.).

We put the exhaust on Tuesday, and I noticed that a screw on the muffler heat shroud was touching a bolt on the sump, so we dropped the exhaust back off to flip the sump bolt for clearance. When we did that, i noticed a bunch of broken rivets on said shroud. We took it apart, and I made the decision to get a new one. It could've been repaired, but it would take a lot of time and still probably only buy a couple years. I'm pretty sure this was the source of the rattling noise I sometimes get on takeoff. The good news is i found a non hartzell exhaust company that actually has them in stock. The bad news is it's going to be around $3K with shipping. Acorn & AWI (both now "A Hartzell Brand!") would've been over $4K...

I am annoyed no one caught this ahead of time, but what are you going to do? It should be here on Thursday, so that should give them plenty of time to get the airframe buttoned back up from the annual (which also should have been done in the intervening 5 months...) and we should be able to run the engine Thursday or Friday.
 
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Jim K said:
We spent monday afternoon and Tuesday wiring and plumbing. Takes longer than you'd think. Prop should go on today (Wed.).

We put the exhaust on Tuesday, and I noticed that a screw on the muffler heat shroud was touching a bolt on the sump, so we dropped the exhaust back off to flip the sump bolt for clearance. When we did that, i noticed a bunch of broken rivets on said shroud. We took it apart, and I made the decision to get a new one. It could've been repaired, but it would take a lot of time and still probably only buy a couple years. I'm pretty sure this was the source of the rattling noise I sometimes get on takeoff. The good news is i found a non hartzell exhaust company that actually has them in stock. The bad news is is going to be around $3K with shipping. Acorn & AWI (both now "A Hartzell Brand!") would've been over $4K..

I am annoyed no one caught this ahead of time, but what are you going to do? It should be here on Thursday, so that should give them plenty of time to get the airframe buttoned back up from the annual (which also should have been done in the intervening 5 months...) and we should be able to run the engine Thursday or Friday.
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It was probably caught. But didn't have your high quality standards and simply said "meh....it'll be fineee"
 
Racerx said:
It was probably caught. But didn't have your high quality standards and simply said "meh....it'll be fineee"
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Good reminder for all owners. It’s on the owners as the final speed bump to make sure the plane is as it should be.

This includes picking the right A&P as well as setting the right tone with them. If year after year we delay maintenance and push to be as cheap as possible, the A&P just isn’t going to keep recommending things that are safe but are getting ragged/“Meh”.
 
I'm not going to cast too many aspersions on the heater box. At the time it was removed, someone thought "well, we have plenty of time to worry about that thing" and when we put it on, we thought, "let's get this on here so we can hear this engine run". No one thought about it in the intermediate term. It wasn't a safety of flight item, and would've been fine until the next annual, but it just seemed to me that there was no better time than now to get a new one. I had told the guys that i wanted to keep the cost down as much as possible this year (lol), so it's possible it was looked at and not deemed bad enough to condemn yet. The mufflers are only a year old, so the exhaust system should be sorted for a few years. I'll be much happier if I never hear that rattling noise again, particularly coming from an engine that I just put together...
 
Jim K said:
We spent monday afternoon and Tuesday wiring and plumbing. Takes longer than you'd think. Prop should go on today (Wed.).
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You're doing the lord's work, Jim. Thank you.
 
Jim K said:
We put the exhaust on Tuesday, and I noticed that a screw on the muffler heat shroud was touching a bolt on the sump, so we dropped the exhaust back off to flip the sump bolt for clearance. When we did that, i noticed a bunch of broken rivets on said shroud. We took it apart, and I made the decision to get a new one. It could've been repaired, but it would take a lot of time and still probably only buy a couple years. I'm pretty sure this was the source of the rattling noise I sometimes get on takeoff. The good news is i found a non hartzell exhaust company that actually has them in stock. The bad news is it's going to be around $3K with shipping. Acorn & AWI (both now "A Hartzell Brand!") would've been over $4K...
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My rig is up at Poplar Grove for avionics and I had them do some pushrod tube sealing on my O300 while it's there. On inspection they found one of my mufflers needed a repair. Turns out they've got connections w/ a former employee of Dawley up in Burlington, WI who's going to try and make a go of it for exhaust repair. For now the shop signed off his repair of my muffler. Looks brand new when I saw it a couple week ago.
Hopefully we'll have a non-Hartzell economical exhaust repair option here in the Midwest again.
 
kaiser said:
@N4984R and I would like to put it on the record that the heater is absolutely a safety of flight item - having flown in 0F SAT without a heater.
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Repaired mine first annual. 2 weeks later a&p had another Cherokee that needed some fabricobbling love. Easy peasy.
 
Heater is optional around here. But avoiding CO from a bad heater isn’t.
 
Jim K said:
We put the exhaust on Tuesday, and I noticed that a screw on the muffler heat shroud was touching a bolt on the sump, so we dropped the exhaust back off to flip the sump bolt for clearance.
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Reminds me of an A&P tale of woe... A plane with retractable gear got an oil quick-drain valve, but the latter was apparently not tested with a gear swing prior to flight. The gear mechanism, on raising the gear, managed to perfectly depress the quick-drain, which worked according to its name and design and released all of the engine oil.
 
If I read the header of that report right, that mistake killed somebody.
 
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