Carlson Skunk Works

September 5th, 2007

AMF-14H Maranda SN:1026 Construction Log

Posted by Roger in AMF 14H Maranda SN1026, news

It has been a long, busy summer, but some progress has been made since my last post.

Enough of the long wing ribs have been built for one wing. This weekend I will be building ribs at our EAA Chapter 1091 fly in here in Kearney. If you get a chance, come on out to see us. With the amount of time and being focused on building ribs I am hoping to have a significant number of ribs completed by the end of Saturday. Just to be sure that I have enough material to keep working on ribs, I ordered more 1mm plywood. It should be here tomorrow.

The big news is that I have finally located some engines that I can use to build the engine for the Maranda. The pictures show the condition of the engines at present. Before long we should be tearing them apart and cleaning things up.

The engines I am using are Chevrolet Corvair engines. The first one was from a 1963 model and had only 145 cubic inches of displacement. According to the manual I needed a 164 cubic inch engine, so I called the gentleman I bought it from and he said I could trade up. He went through the engines he had and came up with two complete engines that were “stuck” and one block, crank and cam unit. I exchanged the small engine I have for the larger ones and bought a gallon of penetrating oil.

This weekend I was able to put together a stand to put one engine on while we work on it. This gets it up to where we can comfortably get at things and see what we are doing. The stand has wheels so that we can roll it to a convenient location for working on it and then roll it back into storage when we are done.

Take a look at the pictures. I will try to keep the images updated as work progresses.
EnginesBack of EngineFront of EngineSide view