Badland Part 103 Pilots and Builders Forum

Weather has been relatively warm and the propane heater has been able to keep the hangar/shop at a workable temperature.

I have the port wing setup with my Harbor Freight Engine Hoist ready to swing it into position on the fuselage to set the wash-out, sweep, and diheadral.

I finally received my 7/8" to 5/8" hose reducer to fit the right angle water outlet fitting so I was able to remount the radiator below the engine and do some plumbing. I used elbows to route the new 90 degree water outlet fitting to the inlet port on the radiator and have the coolant return line (from the lower radiator port to the engine) also in place with elbows. I will need to insert the bleeder valve fitting into this section of hose to complete the 5/8" hose plumbing. Pictures to follow.

I was checking mu stash of Polini parts delivered with the engine. In so doing I found that the 928.310.006 propeller shaft nut supplied was not correct. Chris thinks that the part did not complete the machining process. On the left is what was in my parts pkg with the engine. The Allen-head bolt cannot be removed and the threads are much too small (shaft requires an M14 left-hand thread) to fit. The part on the right is from Chris' stock (M12), but it has the configuration I need. Polini Parts is $21 ... Chris has contacted Polini about the problem.

Interesting. The parts (from what I can tell) look to be nearly identical on the outside, although the "flats" of the nut section on yours do look unfinished. The Allen-head bolt stuck in there is also very strange.

It would seem that Polini might be lacking somewhat in the parts QC department!

The Polini documentation leaves much to be desired. Lots of sealed pkgs of parts delivered with the engine. The hose clamps do not fit the 16mm and 10mm silicon Polini labeled hoses delivered and I have numerous extraneous parts that don't show up on the schematics at PoliniParts.Com.

Parts are expensive ($21.08 for what is simply described as an M14 propeller nut ... manual says left-hand thread). I hope Chris gets Polini to replace mine.

Still seems to be a nice 38hp engine. I believe the Hirth in my MiniMAX was all of 26hp.

Chris aid that my new flaperon control horns were shipped out to me yesterday. Looking forward to getting the wings in place.

Cold front moving in and I ran out of propane this afternoon. Looks like a morning trip to the Tractor Supply store. Fill up about $6 less than the more convenient Home Depot.

I've had items that included extra parts for other configurations that were not covered by the manual for my order. I figured that if I had a different configuration, the manual for that configuration would use those parts but since my configuration didn't, the parts were not listed. A bit confusing sometimes, but that may be why you have extra parts that aren't listed? Just guessing here, but it's possible. The 38hp sounds like it'll be a nice bump up from using a 28hp on your MiniMAX.

"Leaves much to be desired" is an understatement in my opinion. I'm not sure if it's the same for your engine, but the manual for the 200 is more of a pamphlet. I've been scrounging information from both Poliniparts and from SouthwestAirsports. Southwest has a nice section with a breakdown of the various Polini engines, and tips for each one.

The things a company gets away with concerning lacking good customer service – only because there's not enough demand and competition to make them provide proper documentation. Sad situation.

With a quick check of their site I didn't see a Polini section.

Chris says in the next couple of months he'll be making an Oratex order. If you're leaning that way he says with enough of us we might get a quantity discount.

I'm probably going with the half-naked look. Either blue chasing red or red chasing blue. With the white powder coating it should look pretty good.

Hi Kurt. the Southwest Airsports site is not particularly intuitive, and it takes some hunting to find the Polini info. (It's actuall under "paramotor info" and then "paramotor info by make and model". Here is the direct link:

https://www.southwestairsports.com/ppgt ... nithor.htm

As for the Oratex, I covered my plane in the 3/4 naked look, and am really pleased with how it turned out:

Actually, I guess it would be 3/4 COVERED, wouldn't it?

That's the look I'm thinking of. I'm not good with PhotoShop and could not find a nice 3-view sketch so I took a Cub 3-view and tried colors to get and idea of the red/blue or Blue/Red look with the white powder coat ... Could be red chasing blue ...
I found some "proper size" ear-clamps at my local old-fashioned hardware store, so I worked on the 7/8" and 5/8"engine coolant hoses. The Routing looks good and I added some cable ties and anti-shafe tape. I still want to replace a few of the screw-type hose clamps. I'll get back to that. I found a 2.75" auto exhaust system U-clamp that should mount the radiator fill/overflow bowl. It is steel and somewhat heavy with 5/16" nuts. I'm thinking of bending some of my leftover 3/16" aluminum rod (from the tail-feathers) ... should be much lighter.
I also have the port wing somewhat positioned against the fuselage, using a combination of engine hoist and support rollers (on a small shop table). Still needs a bit of tweeking at the root end to properly fit over the positioning lugs. I should be able to get all that to align when I trial fit the lift strut.