Matt's RV-7 Project

Mattituck sent me a new gasket to replace the wrong-sized one they'd originally sent me with the engine, so I was finally able to bolt the fuel injection servo to the engine. I put a thin coat of fuel lube on both sides of the gasket before installing it.

There aren't really any detailed instructions on how to mount this thing, other than a drawing in the plans that shows the correct orientation. In one of the bags of stuff that came with the engine I found some 5/16" nuts and star washers, so that's what I used to attach the fuel servo to the sump. Confusingly, the Lycoming overhaul manual calls out a torque value for 5/16" nuts that's noticeably higher than what AC43-13b says to use, but it's largely a point of academic interest – even using a crow's foot, there's no possible way to get a torque wrench onto at least two of the nuts, so I just wrenched them all by feel until they were good and tight.

Looking down the business end of the air intake, you can see the four airflow pickups (or whatever they're really called) in front of the closed throttle plate. The Bendix fuel injection system is a purely mechanical system, in which the amount of fuel metered to the cylinders varies with throttle position and the rate of air flow measured at the intake. It's a simple design that's been around since the 60's, and based on my experience flying other Bendix-equipped airplanes it all seems to work pretty well if it's properly set up and adjusted.

To keep unwanted junk from getting lodged in the intake throat, I covered it up with masking tape:

This is the Precision Airmotive RSA-5 fuel injection servo. I need to get this guy bolted onto the airplane, but it didn't come with any instructions – so I don't know, for example, if I need a gasket between the servo and the oil sump, or what. I sent an email to Mattituck.

Van's makes a pretty well-done little kit that contains a bellcrank for connecting the mixture cable to the fuel servo, and a series of little brackets for anchoring the control cables to the engine. I removed two of the case bolts and attached the bellcrank bracket to the oil sump, like so:

The mixture cable bracket attaches via another pair of case studs, underneath the #4 cylinder. These nuts all have lockwashers under them.

The throttle cable bracket bolts to a threaded boss on the bottom of the oil sump. I safety-wired the bolt heads:

Those coarse-thread bolts didn't come drilled, so I had to use my handy bolt-head-drilling jig to do it myself:

Here we go, two drilled-head, coarse-thread bolts:

I attached the engine-driven fuel pump's inlet fitting:

…and the outlet fitting, with restrictor fitting to feed the fuel pressure transducer:

With the engine suspended from the hoist, we unbolted and removed the pallet, leaving the engine swinging:

Matthew Brandes and his foreign-exchange student Nat came up to help put the engine on. Matthew has already been through this exercise on his RV-9A, so he is an old hand. We maneuvered the engine into place and managed to get the first three bolts in without much trouble, but the last one was kind of a goat-rope.

Chad was there to help too. Maybe he'll get started on his own RV soon…?

Finally, all four bolts went in. We unhooked the hoist and lowered the tail down before final-tightening the nuts.

I was able to get all four cotter pins put in, and considering that there's almost no access to install them, I'm happy with how they turned out.

The fuselage is on the wheels with the engine installed. Awesome.

The prop governor oil line comes pretty close to the engine mount. I'll have to keep an eye on this.

The oil filter looks like it's trapped forever, but there's just enough room to remove and reinstall it.

It took about an hour and a half for us to get the engine bolted to the mount, and another hour or so for me to get the bolts tightened, install the cotter pins, and clean up. All in all, much less work than I thought it would be. Thanks to Matthew, Nat, and Chad for the help.