Since I don't post enough overview photos, here's a picture of the fuselage as it looks today. Yep, there it is.
I started today's session by getting out my Vetterman exhaust pipes and temporarily bolting them up to the engine. The welding on these pipes is really, really nice, and the fit is excellent.
What was less excellent was the way the exhaust pipes interfered with the throttle cable. After I spent all that time getting the linkage to work right, I found that the factory-supplied bracket, installed per the plans, causes the throttle cable to run right into the crossover pipe from cylinders 3 and 4. Grrrr. There needs to be at least three quarters of an inch of clearance between the cable and the hot exhaust pipe, but in this photo you can see that they are totally smooshed up against one another. No good.
After much bad language and head scratching, I figured out how to get the cable to clear the exhaust pipes by reversing the mounting bracket, thus moving the cable attach point about two inches outboard from its previous position:
Here's an end-on view, showing that the cable is now routed well clear of the exhaust pipes, through a relatively open area:
To make it all fit, I had to re-bend the bracket to make the angles work out. The geometry involved here makes it necessary for the cable to run downhill to the bracket, and then the cable's actuator rod thingy has to slope sharply upwards towards the fuel injector servo. Luckily the cable end is designed to accommodate a certain range of motion.
The linkage angles inward towards the throttle arm, where it now attaches on the outboard side with a shorter bolt. Good thing I used an offset arm here.
Here's a view looking up from the floor. With the throttle quadrant hooked up inside the fuselage, there's just barely enough travel to hit the wide-open and idle stops. I think there's actually less margin than before, if that's possible, but it does work. The cable actually has pretty good clearance from the exhaust pipes, too – about an inch, which is way more than was physically possible with the other bracket arrangement.
What a mess. The combination of horizontal induction and throttle quadrant is an exercise in frustration. And speaking of messes, this is what happens when you fiddle with control cables for multiple weeks without putting your tools and parts away – it took me half the afternoon to clean this up:
We also went to the huge parade they held downtown to celebrate the big sports victory.
My views on sporting events are well known, but it was still fun.
