More engine pics/description
It is amazing the journey airplane parts can take. My engine came off an Aztec that had been sold some years back to a company in Germany, who than sold it onto a company in Greece. I have engine logs in English, German, and Greek. With the economic collapse in Greece, the owner went bankrupt, but due to tax reasons, the plane could not be sold out of Greece, so it was parted out. A Canadian salvage company bought the parts, and I bought the engine from them. Narrow deck with 1780 hrs Total time, and 700 SMOH. But, it had sat a long time in Greece, so needed overhauled even though it was described to me as ready to fly. Fortunately the price was right.
After getting all the parts for the engine ready, which takes a surprising amount of time, I decided I wasn't ready to trust myself building the engine. So that is how I headed to a friends shop in North Dakota, grass strip beside his house and shop but that did not help for this trip. Arrived there at 6pm on Sunday after a 833 mile drive and he was ready to get to work, so even while I was still unpacking the truck, my friend Brookes and my son Donavan who drove out with me got to work with Randy building the engine.
Here are some of the parts I was laying out for the build.
Looking at the case half you can see some extra doweling that was added, this was an option with the case overhauler to help reduce fretting (case halves wearing by rubbing against each other).
Notice where the camshaft is going in the engine, the crankshaft cradles are below it, that is why camshafts have so much trouble, they only get oiled by what is splashed onto them from the camshaft.
Here we are bolting the case halves together.
Here is the bottom half of the engine at the end of the first evening (night?), it was 1 a.m.
The next morning we started putting gears in the accessary case.
Here are some of the cylinders ready to mount, notice the numbers on the piston heads. We weighed each one of the rods, piston pins and heads and arranged to get balanced weights, were able to get within a gram.
Here you can see the first rod attached to the crankshaft.
Starting to attached cylinders, hey it is a real engine.