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It's been forever since I've logged my time, but I've been working diligently almost every day. Today I'm logging some of the time I've spent on the engine cold air intake. I decided to fabricate a two filter setup, made along the lines of the Lancair ram air option. I actually bought a ram air setup to adapt, but quickly learned that it did not work for my plan. The ram air side came too close to the front baffle to put a filter on that end. I finallly figured out that a 70 degree bend in a three inch tube would work just fine. That left three tasks - making and welding on a mounting bracket to attach the assembly to the engine, making and attaching a pipe for the second filter, and making beads on the ends of the pipes to help hold the filters and the hose to mount to the throttle body.

I've never done any of this before, so my learning curve was tremendous.
Making the mounting bracket was pretty easy, but I had to teach myself to weld aluminum well enough to tack the bracket and the second pipe while they were on the engine, to make sure of correct fit. I have tig welded for some time, but only with steel. Alulminum is another beast altogether. Luckily, I do have a Miller Syncorwave 180 welder, which while not state of the art, is certainly adequate for welding aluminum. Using scraps, cutoffs, and lots of YouTube videos, I got good enough to tack the tube and the bracket in place.

After tacking, I took the piece to a professional welder, and he finished the job, at least so I thought. As I was opening up the passage from the short tube to the long tube, my drill got into the side of the short piece more than just a scratch. So I cut off the short pipe, and made another one. To make a long story a bit less long, I then decided to weld the short pipe onto the long one myself. More practice. The result was really pretty good. I decided to fix a couple of spots that I did not like, but that went well also. Finally I polished the whole part, just for the heck of it.

All the above consum

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