I arrived at the hangar this morning at 0730, and got right at removing the prop. I couldn’t borrow the engine hoist I had used for this task in the past, so instead I supported the sling from one of the rafters in the hangar. Once the prop was off, I found that the 7355 V-belt was a very, very tight fit to get over the pulleys. I cheated and removed the flywheel, which allowed me to get the belt over both pulleys, and then I slipped the flywheel back in place.

I also secured a second belt over the crankshaft, using two Adel clamps to ensure that it could not touch the flywheel. This will allow me to replace a broken belt in the future without removing the prop, but I will almost certainly have to remove the alternator pivot bolt to allow enough alternator movement to get the belt over the pulley, as I won’t be able to remove the flywheel if I haven’t removed the prop.

I put a heat shield between the exhaust system and the throttle cable.

All that took until lunch time. After lunch I put the plenum chamber cover back on, then attacked the cowling. I put some UMHW rub strips on the areas where the cowling showed signs of rubbing on the plenum chamber screws or oil cooler mount.

I had a very tough time getting the cowl hinge pins in place. Somehow I had bent one of the hinge eyes, and it took a lot of work to get it properly straightened. I am going to have to focus some attention on this aspect of the cowling, as I can’t afford to spend over an hour each time I want to put the cowling back on.

I then flew a 25 minute flight, pretty much a carbon copy of the first flight. After landing I pulled the cowlings again, and confirmed that the alternator pulley had not touched it, and the throttle cable seemed no more damaged than before. I will order a new throttle cable, and replace it at the first convenient opportunity, to avoid the risk of a problem in the future.

I recorded data from the engine monitor, EFIS and GNS430 (I tried to do that on the first flight, but I screwed it up). I confirmed the data is good, but for some reason the program I wrote to automatically create plots of the data isn’t working. Something has changed since I last tested this program two years ago, and I need to spend some time figuring it out. I’ll look at this in my spare time when I am on the road over the next month.