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[May 7, 2019]


Time for the 2019 Annual Conditional Inspection. I've decided that April is the best month of the year to do the annual. Warm enough outside to not freeze your nuts off in the hangar and not need supplemental heat, typically bad flying weather (VERY TRUE THIS YEAR), and AFTER SUN N FUN.

Today I flew a little and did a compression check with the cylinders warm - 75/79/72/79 out of 80 psi...I'm happy!


The fuel line from the firewall to the fuel pump was uncomfortably close (if not touching) the engine mount. I fixed this and added a layer of firesleeve.


SHOCKER...Another crack on the airbox. I stop drilled this.


The most work I needed to put into this annual was fixing some degrading fiberglass on the front-left of the plenum. I recently added a nutplate here to secure the plenum to the baffle. The issue was the fiberglass layout was done quite poor by the original builder (ahem), so I needed to chop a lot of glass off and rebuild it up. I miss building. This stuff is fun.


The finished buildup. I wish I knew then what I know now about fiberglass.


I yanked the impulse coupled 4371 mag off and inspected it. Clean as a whistle inside.


I needed to re-apply RTV to the plenum to create a seal the engine and baffles.


Somehow I cracked one eyelet off the hinges of the seatback.


I try to put a wrench on all nuts or bolts in the RV - especially the critical ones. On the F-684-K left gusset the front bolt was loose. Easy enough fix, right? Well after cranking down on it and it kept on spinning, I knew something was wrong. The bolt is slightly too long for this application the the nut ran up onto the smooth shaft. I was very lucky and was able to drill it out. To drill it out I started with a #40 bit into the flat side of the nut, and worked myself up to a #30 and then #25....which finally snapped the bolt. Was way easier than I thought it should of been.

I don't think this is the 100% proper bolt/washer combo to use here. If you look at the exposed thread here, it's a little excessive, which means the nut is pretty darn close to the smooth shaft of the bolt. I would recommend a second AN960-10 washer here.


What the plans call for - like I have it.

Outside of what I documented here, these are the other things I stumbled across:
*Velco attaching the control stick covers came loose.
*I accidentally timed the impulse coupled mag on the exhaust stroke instead of compression stroke.

Hopefully I have an issue free 2019 flying season!

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Last Modified: August 13, 2023