So near! Too close!

I’ll explain the heading in a moment. Today at last, it was the turn of the Savannah to get the attention, specifically to have the crossbar for its towbar attached and its new propeller fitted. But the first problem was just getting onto the airfield.

After having had a couple of days of sunny, windy weather which started to dry the airfield out after the usual winter rains, although today was sunny and warm with a high of around 15 degrees Celsius, we had another downpour last night that took us back again to square one.

The airfield was again so soft that I reversed my car slowly through the entrance and then down one side and stopped a few yards away from the hangar to minimise the damage. This worked pretty well, but here’s a shot of the hangar front entrance after I’d been working on the aircraft for an hour or so. It was like stomping around in thick soup.

The first task was to see if the towbar crossbar that I’d ground out yesterday, would fit, and it did. So then it was simply a matter of adding a couple of plastic spacers and tightening the fixing nuts, which only took a few moments and the result was a nice neat job. Victor made a light-weight towbar for me which will work OK, but I also want to be able to push the aircraft and I’ll therefore need to have a solid towbar fabricated that will positively connect to the crossbar.

At the time the Savannah was laid up, its engine was already beginning to look a bit dusty just from normal use and between then and now, even though its nose had been covered with an old sheet, its engine had become even more grimy. So before fitting the prop, it was time to give it a good clean-up and here are some shots that I took after the job was completed and I’d given it a few squirts of damp-start here and there.

I’ve found that as well as being a good way to protect rubber and plastic, this is also a good way to stop older aluminium components and surfaces oxidising after you’ve given them a light wire brushing and clean-up. The shiny film wears off eventually but when this happens you can just lightly wire brush it again and reapply it to keep the engine looking shiny and clean.

Then it was time for the big moment – the fitting of the new scimitar blade carbon fibre prop. This turned out to be a little bit more tricky than I’d thought as today, of all days, I’d taken my files out of the back of my car and the spinner back plate’s centre hole needed easing a bit. However, after a bit of a struggle involving careful manipulation and rotating, eventually it was done and the prop was on.

It’s too late now because there’s no choice, but for me the jury is still out appearance-wise. I don’t know – maybe it will grow on me in time, but the factor that will be totally convincing will be how it performs, and that will come later.

But it was only after having fitted the prop and then moving on to refit the engine cowling that I was hit by today’s problem. The Savannah’s engine is angled slightly to the right to help mitigate the effect of engine torque, especially when the throttle is opened wide eg during take off, and this means that the clearance between the prop flange and the engine cowling is smaller on the right than on the left.

As a result, I found that the skirt on the spinner back plate, which is quite deep, was much too close to the engine cowling and in fact was fouling it. Indeed, the fit was so tight that after having taken the above shots, I couldn’t get the cowling back off again without removing the prop first.

Here’s a shot that shows what I’m talking about.

It’s not that serious. Having removed the prop again, I’ve brought the spinner back plate home with me and I’ll be able to grind a few millimetres of its skirt away before taking it back and refitting it. Hopefully that will solve the problem and I’ll also be able to ease its centre hole a little bit, which will make me feel better as my experience is that if things are too tight a fit, they eventually end up breaking. And that I’d like to avoid if I can.