My Engine

Hi,

This blog is about my main hobby, aviation.

I love microlights, as they are called here, or ultralights as they are called in the US.

I'm very interested in building my own ultralight, particularly the volksplane, however i'm still undecided.

I bought a VW 1200cc beetle engine that rolled off the factory line way back in 1964...

I paid 65 euros for it so it wasn't a bad buy. I've been working on converting it for use in flight.

The above photo is the engine with all the cooling tins/flaps removed for, the engine. I also removed the fan and oil cooler.
(the oil cooler needs to be placed horizontally eventually)
I gave the enigne a good cleaning with a wire brush and air hose.



The above picture shows all the stuff removed from the enigne. note that the ignition coil and the oil cooler have to be put back on the engine...but the total weight removed from the engine totalled to around 20kg, around 50 lbs.



The picture at the top is the engine stripped of almost everything. It should be below this text but blogger didnt allow me to move it down :s (yes, i put spark plugs on it)

The engine looks like a proper flat four aircraft engine.

I weighed it empty with my bathroom scales it weighs about 62 kilos, give or take a few kg..

In order to get it running, I still need a distributor, carburettor, fuel pump, igniton coil and cables connected to the spark plugs.

I now hope to try get it running and remove the flywheel to decrese around 7-10 more kg in weight.

see the following posts, coming soon

Christian