Engine arrival | 11.9.2020

Awesome news: our engine arrived in Knoxville. Bad news: when the freight company called to schedule delivery, they told me that the next time a lift-gate truck was going to be in our area was about a week and a half later.

 Knowing that the engine was sitting so close for so long would have killed me inside, so I called back and found out that I could pick up the engine direct from the freight location in Knoxville. It was only a 45 minute drive or so, which was a no-brainer. I already had to go buy an engine hoist halfway there anyway, so I went and picked up the crate, then picked up the engine hoist on the way back.

Engine hoist assembled. I'm sure a Harbor Freight 2 Ton hoist can handle a 300 lb load, right? I'll admit I was nervous.

Cracking into the crate.

Everything looks undamaged.

At this point, we disassembled the crate sides in the truck bed and hooked the hoist up to the engine and lifted it off the truck. We set the engine and crate bottom on the lift legs and rolled it into the garage.

In place for now.

This engine is a relatively new IO-360-C1C, with an overhaul by Penn Yan (one of the biggest overhaul shops in the US) just over 3 years ago and just under 300 hours on it. Tons of life left. It was removed from a Piper that was destroyed in the Nashville tornadoes earlier this year. From the salvage auction pics that I found (prior to purchasing the engine), the original host plane basically looked like the back half was destroyed, but the prop and engine were untouched. Perfect for what we need, and it fit the budget. I was shocked at how nice it looked out of the crate.

Couldn't help myself from doing some work on the engine right after it arrived.

The first thing to be done was to lose some weight. We won't be needing a vacuum pump for our instruments, so we'll remove that first. Eventually we will likely put a backup alternator in this spot, but it's not needed for now, and there's not really room in the budget anyway.

Top right hole with the paper towel used to be the vac pump.

Next off is the prop governor. This engine originally drove a constant speed prop, which we're not using because of the budget. Maybe we'll have $14k laying around for an MT prop some day and upgrade, but it's just not in the cards for right now. In any case, the prop governor isn't needed, since we're using a fixed pitch prop.

Bottom right with the paper towel.

Both of these spots will be covered with cover plates and gaskets once they arrive. That's all for now!

- Jeff