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Archive of posts filed under the Sonex category.

Engine guts 10: Blueprinting the oil pump

Posted by lutorm on 22 January 2018, 9:41 pm

After dialing in the cam, I moved on to the final (I hope) grinding work that needed to be done before the case could be closed up: blueprinting the oil pump. I had to get a new oil pump because the old one had the external connections for the oil cooler, which we will no …

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Filed under Airplane, Sonex | 1 Comment

Engine guts 9: Dialing the cam

Posted by lutorm on 21 January 2018, 7:49 am

One of the few remaining things to check was to “dial the cam”, i.e., to verify that the camshaft and crankshaft are timed correctly. In its most basic form, this is done by ensuring that the marked teeth on the gears on the crank and cam shafts are aligned, and if you were assembling a …

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Filed under Airplane, Sonex | 1 Comment

Engine guts 8: Balancing act complete

Posted by lutorm on 13 January 2018, 8:52 pm

The balancing of the new connecting rods and the pistons is now done. They were within about 1.5 grams to begin with, so there wasn’t much to do. Neither the rods, nor the pistons, had balancing pads. On the pistons I could see where material had been removed around the skirt for balancing previously, so …

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Engine guts 7: More oil mods

Posted by lutorm on 12 January 2018, 9:51 pm

The second step in the “oil mods“, after boring the case to increase oil supply to the left-side (in the airplane) lifters, is to modify the lifters themselves to increase the oil supply to the head. As you can see below, the lifters have two circumferential grooves in them. One of the grooves has a …

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Filed under Airplane, Sonex | 1 Comment

Engine guts 6: More head work

Posted by lutorm on 3 January 2018, 9:21 pm

While working on the “oil mods”, I’ve also been trying to get the combustion chamber volumes more even, as I talked about two posts ago. As so many other things, this became quite an ordeal. It turns out 2cc is a lot of material to remove. I’ve been grinding and measuring for what seems like …

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Filed under Airplane, Sonex | 3 Comments

Engine guts 5: Oil mods

Posted by lutorm on 1 January 2018, 9:16 pm

I finally got the “aircraft drill bit” (which is a very long drill bit. Why they are called that, I don’t know) needed for the modifications to the oil delivery in the engine case. Apparently, type 1 VW engines have marginal oil supply to the rocker arms in the heads. Oil gets there through a …

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Filed under Airplane, Sonex | 2 Comments

Engine guts 4: Blueprinting

Posted by lutorm on 28 December 2017, 10:45 pm

Things are slowly proceeding on the engine frontĀ as I’m meticulously going through some things while waiting for parts for others. I got the cam gear thrust bearing endplay, mentioned in the last post, set right only to realize that this added to the free play in the gears (they are helical, so end play translates …

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Filed under Airplane, Sonex | 1 Comment

Engine guts 3

Posted by lutorm on 19 December 2017, 10:49 pm

I finally got the engine case back from the machine shop, so I could proceed with remaining work. First I finished up drilling out all the oil passage plugs from the case that my Dad and I started before giving the case to the shop. To be 100% sure that you get all gunk and …

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Filed under Airplane, Sonex | 5 Comments

Fitting the propeller

Posted by lutorm on 10 December 2017, 8:53 pm

Along with needing to machine the engine case to fit the Force One bearing, there was one additional task needed to fit the propeller to the new hub. The Aerovee hub centers the prop on six bushings around the bolts, while the Force One hub has a 2″ centering pilot. Neither of our two propellers, …

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Filed under Airplane, Sonex | 3 Comments

Engine guts part 2

Posted by lutorm on 3 December 2017, 8:32 pm

Over the last month, posting has been sidelined by my parents visiting which, as usual, was accompanied by lots of home improvement work. My dad and I got some work done on the Aerovee too, though. As suspected, the local VW shop deemed the crankshaft unserviceable (apparently the center journal wasn’t just way worn, it …

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Filed under Airplane, Sonex | 2 Comments

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