Category: Bearhawk 1175 Building Log

After a lot of research on oil coolers I decided on X-SERIES OIL COOLERS BY AIRFLOW SYSTEM.  It also has a nice fiberglass cooling duct.

I ordered an airbag from Aircraft Spruce.  None of them fit my need exactly so, I bought the closest one and modified it.   I had to cut off the two ports and add an extra one on the back.  My air box will not need an overflow because it doesn’t receive ram air from the baffling.  Instead the carb heat will collect ambient air from a partial shroud on the Vetterman exhaust.

Looking great!

I ordered the Vans RV-10 engine baffling kit for the O-540.  Very nice and easy to put together!  It won’t fit perfect out of the box with the BearHawk, but it’s a great start.

I also received my Vetterman Exaust system today!  It fit perfectly!

The wiring continues with all the engine monitoring.  I’ve got the Vertical Power installed and have started configuring everything.

You can also see in this picture that I finished fabricating the cargo door skins.

I decided I wanted a light weight but durable floor so I decided on a light weight truck be roll on liner.  I first sanded the aluminum floors then treated them to accept the roll on liner.

The final product turned out great!

Over several days, I started designing and installing the main electrical components.  In this picture you can see the two relays (starter and main), ANL Fuse, Shunt, Battery and the Fuse Box for the shunt wires and for a hot battery bus which will run the dome lights.

Here you can see the ELT control, parking brake, headset jacks, master switch, starter switch, throttle, switches and intercom have all been installed.  Along with the paper mockups of the displays.

I decided to tackle upholstering my own seats since it’s inordinately expensive to have it done.  I drug out the sewing machine, drew a design, and had at it.

Only the tops are done, but they’re turning out very nice.  I have discovered that I do not enjoy sewing though!

Today, Jessica rode the brakes while we backed it outside for some pictures!

To this point, I’ve done a bit more work, but neglected to take pictures.  I mounted the cargo doors and fabricated the door skin for the passenger door.

I bought an inexpensive engine hoist at Harbor Freight.  I read quite a bit about hanging the engine and all the problems one might encounter.  Oddly enough, it was very simple to hang.

Everything lined up and it went right on!

I wanted to do a traditional BearHawk paint job, but was warned about dark colors shrinking tapes in the hot AZ sun.  So I scoured the internet for alternative paint schemes that would look nice but not have too much blue.

I started masking the lines for the blue trim.  Took quite a while to get the lines the way I wanted them.

Next came the masking paper.  I started with regular masking paper from Home Depot and wasn’t happy with how thin it was.  So, I went back and got the heavy duty stuff.  Basically the same as what paper grocery bags are made of.

With all the hard work done, the final painting was easy and a bit anticlimactic!

Looks nice!

Back up on wheels, I put the rudder on! The lines matched up!  Yippee!