·:[ Darryl's Coot Building Journal ]:·
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After building new side baffles, front baffles, and rear baffles, the next step was to reinstall the whole thing.

First, here are a few “before” pictures. I took these in July 2007, while evaluating the airplane for purchase. No doubt they were in even rattier shape after an additional 225 hours of operations.

In this photo, notice the multiple patches on the side baffles. Pretty ratty, huh? When I bought the plane, one of my first thoughts was that I needed to build new baffling.

Here is the other side. Notice the beads RTV…

The horizontal bead of RTV was, in fact, the only thing that kept those two pieces of metal connected!

Check out the crack on this front baffle. Also, notice the ugly (dry, cracking) rubber seal along the cylinder.

Most of the top seals were in excellent shape. Not so for those front seals.

Okay…back to the future. The Yankee was in Dave Wheeler’s shop in Arlington getting a cylinder overhauled during the plane’s annual. Dave kindly permitted me to do the re-baffling re-installation myself.

Here is the preliminary installation (notice that one cylinder is missing in these photos):

And here are some photos after the final installation (and after the first test-flight):

Happiness!

Okay…I finished these things months ago, but have not finished writing them up. We previously examined the Yankee re-baffling project with new side baffles and new front baffles.

The two-piece rear baffle was in pretty good shape. Mostly, the cylinder shrouds had been rendered to almost toothless combs:

Following disassembly, cardboard patterns were carefully constructed for each piece:

As with the previous pieces, new blanks were cut from 0.032″ 6061-T6 sheet aluminum.

Here is one piece after putting in the bends. Notice the cylinder shrouds are longer than in the original, that was intentional. I curled the cylinder shrouds over forms made of wood, after hammerforming in the bead:

The other piece was slightly more complex because of multiple bends, requiring more planning in the order in which the bends were made.

The next step was to reassemble everything for riveting:

and actually riveting and reassembling the whole thing together:

The next step…re-install the fresh baffling.