Having got the first fit of upper and lower cowls .. just leaves a bit of fine tuning to round out any square cut edges so I dont get age fractures at any ‘hard’ corners.

Got a presentation at the Jersey Aero Club tomorrow night so needs to look her best !

Reminds me so much of Thomas the Tank engine characters .. that startled look

Late night last night and finally finished the top cowl …

Big relief not to have cocked this one up !! Still, only 3 bits had to be replaced .. two tubes at around £3 each and this 🙂

Can start to finish off and fill any marks, rub down and then plan to get top painted Drab Olive Green

Bob at Channel Island Aero Services has kindly loaned me with Corrosion X treatment equipment. Consists of a pressurised container and a long steel tube wand with a small brass end with slots that ensure a 360 surface coverage

Set this up last Sunday but just not sufficient oil to get it to work properly but certainly looks like it will do the job easily. Tried to obtain Corrsion X oil locally and no joy so got on the net and luckily got hold of a fantastic chap at http://www.corrosion-x.co.uk called Rob Mugglestone. Within minutes of contacting the very helpful secretary at the firm Rob rang and said he would check Jersey based suppliers and sort something. Rang back at 8pm to say none but he would ship 5 litres in 2 days. Now that is service !

18 Feb – 5 litre bottle duly arrived and cranked up the cylinder to pressure (not sure exactly what it should be so tried 2 bar … then 4 bar) At 4 the trigger press gave me a resonable sprey from part of the 180 degree slits and certainly in the confined space of the mainspar this will coat reasonably well.

Now the aircraft is off the trailer nad sitting ‘properly’ ie on her tail .. after about an hour the wing tip ends started dripping .. so its worked its way through. Useful to spray these as we are in such sea based air around here. Aim to give second coat this weekend and also spray inside the drag spar.

Having already pre cut for the Spitfire variometer .. I will plan to add 4 small corner brackets for an iPad fitting in the front

What a pain .. the adaptor that I bought turned out to be incorrect … looked fine on the internet !

So will try Sky Craft to see if they have the correct part and also the female adaptor for the cylinder head temperature lead.

10 Feb 2015 – Sky Craft have one and are shipping it today. so hopefully a weekend of connecting ?

Having tried a number of local stores to source a 4.5 mm allen key my good friend Mike Fleming managed to locate one and hey presto … it first not only the cylinder head cover plates but also the exhaust manifold bolts. The manifold bolts were surprisingly easy to slacken .. had expected quite a bit of grunt.

A couple of turns and the downpipes were freely moving

Admission time ! – Yes , I did cut the holes in the wrong place ! Then spotted the TLAC perfectly marked holes !

Nice neat fit … leaves a few minor eeking out of the holes to make sure its a snug fit but looks great.

Paul H S has sourced me a replacement top cowl which has been shipped to my son at Williams F1 ! so they will be wondering where exactly on the FW37 this part actually fits !!!  Driving over with a van to drop Benjamin’s house bits off so coming back empty which will mean I get the cowl back in one piece.

I spotted late last night that I had managed to miss the two lower ailerons for the polyurethane treatment and they had picked up a surface colouring whilst in the barn. I sanded it off last night but had no polyurethane in the barn so .. an early morning post 7 am to get it all treated and drying today

Waiting for replacement top cowl so got on with trimming down the engine cooling shrouds.

These came in the engine box that I bought and already had the mod that puts an air dam in the back of the shroud so that incoming air flows over the cylinder heads and is then forced down the back of the rear cylinder head instead of just washing out at the back.

I found that all the indented hex heads that secure the cylinder top plate and exhaust manifolds are odd sizes and don’t fit any of my socket drive hex heads or even my allen key set !

I cant get at the manifold bolts as the socket will need an extended head to make sure I miss all the cylinder fins etc that shroud the fittings. These all need to be loosened off so that I can get the exhaust temporarily fitted to estimate where the lower cowl needs holes for outlets.

Admission time …. I fitted the top cowl and trimmed to the best fit I could but then had my son Ben visit from Oxford so took the opportunity to have another pair of skilled hands help me get the lower cowl into position …

It was only then that I realised I had over cut the top cowl and would have been better (certainly with the Jab engine) starting with the bottom. The TLAC indicated cut areas on the lower cowl were spot on and only need a little more widening to take account of the larger fins on my Jabiru.

I then put 4 cleco’s in position and it was held like a rock … I could then see that my trimming of the top was not going to work.

I have a couple of options which are being actively reviewed.

1) Buy a new top – pretty expensive and we don’t have January sales in these items !! 😦

2) Run a backing strip of carbon fibre/glass and re-edge the area I have cut

Option 2 looks like a viable option so we are going to try that first .. with option 1 as an obvious fallback.

The plan is to get some slim F1 styled scoops (the sort they have just above and behind the drivers head) to act as extra scoops for air but also have a matched pair (one for each side for ‘visual’ balance) to hide the protruding heads.

Watch this space and we will see how the repair goes !

1 May 2020 – very late update .. as I saw someone had been looking at this post recently … well.. option 2 seemed a non starter as ‘why spoil the whole thing for a ‘hapeth of tar’ as they used to say … probably when ships were being built up North !
so .. I paid up and bought new … but … could never bring myself to throw the original .. so it stayed in the back of the barn for years … then .. much later .. I dragged it out .. cut some aircraft alloy strips and riveted in place .. this gave me the increased ‘depth’ back and then had fun aligning drill holes for the fixing bolts

This gave me the option to use either cowl … so I painted up the old (white) one with black stripes … added some poppies and got it ready to celebrate D day invasion landings in July 2019.

I have now just added a number 7 and a 5 to celebrate the 75th year since Jersey was liberated post WWII .. along with some hand painted figures