Current Progress Part 9

This is the bottom of the airplane, looking from the engine aft.  The radiator, mounted long-wise, can be seen here.  A little too much contrast for the scanner I'm afraid.

Here's the ol' EA-81 mounted on the fuselage.

The left side view of the engine.  The battery can be seen against the fuselage.

Engine mounting viewed from the right side.  One of the electric fuel pumps is clearly visible at the bottom left, the 2nd is hidden a little to the right.

A last view from the left side, clearly showing the battery and the battery contactor above it.   The two coils and the coil joiner can be seen at the top.

Here is the inside of the cowling after cutting the holes and fiberglassing-in the bubbles for the oil pan and the valve covers.  Zenith says to rivet them in instead of fiberglassing.   The cut-outs to clear the muffler are not finished, and need to be made bigger yet.

The canopy is placed on top to see how much the canopy tubes need to be massaged.  I ended up going through 3 rear canopy tubes before getting one bent acceptably.  The canopy comes with a protective sprayed-on coating on the inside and out.

This is the final right side of the canopy.  The brass handle is meant for a house window.   The lock can be seen next to it.

At the top is the welded steel rod with two hooks that the original plans use to attach the canopy at each side.  Instead I went with the system shown below, based on an alternate attachment method Zenith describes in a newsletter.  This is the inside extension strip at the bottom of the canopy.  The canopy side would be sandwiched between this and the outside strip.

Here is the rear canopy tube, painted black.  The canopy holes were enlarged to 1/4", and slivers of model airplane fuel tubing used as washers for the #8 oval screws and finishing washers.  Plexiglass expands and contracts quite noticably with temperature, so some sort of flexible mounting is required.

For more pictures, click here.

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