47-02 -> 06: Baffle & Snorkle Choice / Cylinder Surround Baffles / Left and Right Aft Baffles

What baffles do i need?

A word on the baffle kit - since i am going with an Angle Valve IO-360 as my engine, i did not order the RV-14 Firewall Forward kit in it's entirety. I went through the list of items and picked and chose what i needed - in some cases i ordered the items from the EXP-119 kit, and in others ordered parts from the standard RV-14 FWF kit. The RV14 FWF kit is designed aroung the IO-390 engine, however it comes with the "BAF-14-IO 360/390" baffle kit which is "RV-14/14A IO 360 & IO-390 Angle Valve Engine Baffle Kit, 200hp & 210hp" and the site states "You may use it on the RV-14 with the angle-valve IO-360 or IO-390 engines."

So hopefully this fits the enigne ok! 

The baffles are made in '4 corners' - the aft left and right, and the forward left and right. 

The kit includes the new 5" hole in the rear right corner for the larger ducting for the oil cooler, and it comes with the air box / air filter frame. 

Snorkle Choices

This baffle kit comes with the VA-132 snorkle (Version 3). This is the snorkle which has the flat flange on the engine end, designed to mate with the smaller diameter RSA-5 style fuel servos. 

The newer EXP-119 variant engine does not use this snorkle - it uses the VA-271 snorkle, which is a totally different design. This is designed for the FM-200 fuel servo, and the servo end has a tube arrangmeent which slides over the fuel servo. 

It would seem that the VA-271 snorkle would be a good choice to mate with the SDS EFI fuel servo, however the FM-200 is an 80mm diameter fuel servo, whereas the SDS EFI is 60mm, so this would have involved glass work to make this fit. 

As such, i decided to go with the VA-132 snorkle, and purchased a 2.5" aluminium flange which will be attached to the end later. 

I will use the SDS supplied silicone hose to bridge the gap between the snorkle and the fuel servo. The SDS Fuel servo is 2.57" in length, wheres a RSA-5 servo is 5.5" in length. So i should have almost 3" of silicone tube to play with for alignment of the snorkle later. 

This will be the rough arrangement

This section is baffling...

As always, a new section starts with parts preperation! The baffle kit is not an exception. Work started with the 4 x cylinder surround baffles and their doublers. The parts were deburred carefully, then primed with the VHT Engine Enamel primer. The doublers were riveted on with a mixture of flush and dome rivets, depending on the location on the clyinder. 

There were a lot of nasty crack prone corners like these!

This is what they all ended up like.

Flush rivets were called out in some locations, due to clearance with the cylinders.

Left and Right Rear Baffles

Next up was the left and right rear baffles. These were cleaned, etched and primed in a similar fashion using the VHT Engine Enamel primer. 

The 'water break' sheen is what i am looking for. An even film of water means the part is clean. 

These are the centre brackets which bolt to the 'spine' of the engine case. These will be painted blue to match the engine. Since they are attaching to torqued engine fasteners, dots were placed over the bolt locations, so there is no paint under the fasteners.

I also masked off the areas where silicone pads will later be placed. 

The centreline brackets were painted in anodised blue to match the engine case.

Next up was riveting it all together. I really had to get creative with some of the setups. 

I lost this bit - turns out when i sprayed the centreline brackets blue, i moved it so it didn't get overspray - then forgot! I couldn't not find it anywhere - it was hanging from my vice.

This is an interesting nutplate - the rivet callout is for dome head rivets. It turns out the bolt here goes through the accessory case, then uses a spacer to hold the baffles forward off the case a little. Hence the reason why it wasn't flush rivets. 

These space the baffles off of the cylinders to allow proper cooling in the corners where the cylinder fins have zero depth (the #2 and #3 cylinders).

I just could not reach these ones, so used pull rivets.

The Cylinder #4 surround baffle was riveted to the aft left baffle, completing that corner.

The cylinder #3 surround baffle was riveted to teh rear right baffle, completing the aft right corner.