Firewall Forward

In my last entry, I mentioned the tapered pin that I will be installing on my nose gear leg socket. Well, today I spent some time with my son Luke over at his home hanging out in his shop with him. I thought it might be fun to share this little project with him and get his help. So I took all the stuff over there and we went to work. I brought the motor mount and nose wheel into his shop and temporarily assembled it. We were trying to figure out how to set it up for the drilling and reaming operation. (by the way, the wheel in the picture below is upside down on the mount! Or, should I say, the mount is upside down. Anyway, I straightened it out before we started drilling.)

Luke was great. He pulled out his sawhorses and a sheet of plywood and set this up for me. It turned out to be a good stable platform to temporarily hold the whole setup in place while I drilled and reamed the hole through the motor mount and gear leg. Earlier, I visited my local Tool Shed and found a brand new 11/32" drill bit for the pilot hole (cost $2.00!). I'm glad I came over here because Luke works in construction and he had a big powerful electric drill for the drilling operation. This is where it got very interesting. I couldn't believe how hard this material is to drill, and how long it took to drill the 11/32" hole through it. I had lots of liquid Boelube on hand, and no kidding, it took me a good two hours to drill this hole! I'd drill a bit, then pull the bit out and let it cool slightly, add some more boelube, and then continue. This positioning was perfect, allowing me to push down on the drill and put some weight into it. But it still took forever to get the pilot hole all the way through. Wow. That's the hardest hole I've ever drilled. In my life! You may wonder what the hammer is for. Don't worry, it was only used to nail the plywood temporarily to the saw horse!

Once we finally got the hole drilled, it was time to take a break. Then we re-oriented the whole assembly as seen below, so I could ream from the bottom of the motor mount in a sideways direction, pushing toward the sawhorse platform. This worked very well. And it went a LOT faster than drilling the pilot hole! This, by comparison, took no time at all. Once the reamer is all the way through, you really want to slow down and go very slowly and very carefully, sneaking up on the right amount of taper. If you overshoot, wow. You're in trouble! So go slow and be careful. Some people even use a ratchet wrench at this point, turning the reamer very slowly by hand. I pulled the reamer frequently and inserted the tapered pin, checking to see how much further I had to go. I used a very slow speed on the drill.

Once I reached the proper depth, it was time to clean it all up, deburr the edges of the holes, and then assemble it for a final check. Here it is! I'm very pleased with how this turned out. And I'm very happy to have it finished.

That's one more step toward getting the engine hung. I'm going to take this home and clean it all up. All the boelube left a greasy mess on parts of it.

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