Installed the magneto harness today. Didn’t take very long. I’ll terminate the ends when the heads are installed. Planning on doing that next week.
unfortunantly the plane is taking the back burner right now. We are moving due to my wife’s promotion. Just back to a house we already own, but it puts me further from the plane until I get a hangar at the airport I’m working at now, luckily I’m pretty high on the list and there is a hangar that may be available in a few months.

Some notes on the limbach l2000 E01

the engine seems to be a mixed bag of German parts. In particular when it comes to the cylinders and pistons. The base of the pistons measure 93.75mm and the top measure 98mm. This suggests they may be aftermarket Porsche 356 heads since they are cast aluminum.

​No work happened this weekend. I blew out my back...

Space coast imports finished machining my heads to fit the cylinders. They look great!

I just put the old and new heads side by side and they match up great. Hopefully the larger valves will help it breath better. I had planned to see if the seats on the old heads could be fixed, but then I noticed a crack in the intake runner. See the pics below.

​hopefully I can get everything back together on the 21st. The only thing I need is the thermocouples and spark plugs.

Dropped the heads off and a cylinder at spacecoast imports today. As soon as he saw it was an aluminum cylinder he knew it was for an airplane. He is hoping to have it done tomorrow. Since I’ll be away this weekend I told him it is okay to finish it the beginning of next week, but since Wednesday is a holiday I’d like to have them by then if he can do it.

because the plane runs pretty cool even in 95 degree weather I’m thinking about having him port and polish the new heads.

​the shop was cool too so here’s a pic...

Really fought with myself about posting this, but the heads I received were not what I ordered. I thought maybe I had made a mistake, but when I double checked I found I hadn’t. The heads were the wrong casting 043 instead of 040, valves were larger, which means that the sparkplug holes were smaller, so my magneto harness will not work. The biggest problem though is the cylinder bore was not cut correctly, it was cut to 97.65mm after I specified that that diameter of the cylinders were 98mm. On top of all of that, I ordered the heads on September 2nd, and didn’t receive them until the third week of October. That wouldn’t of been a problem, except I called after three weeks and it didn’t seem like the owner even remembered my order. Then I called a week later and he said he would take the heads to the machine shop, and it would take about a week. So I called the following week, and was told he would pick the heads up and ship them out the next day. Then another week went by and he called me to ask for my cc number because the system he uses purges it after a month. He finally shipped the next day, but unfortunately I was leaving for vacation for 11 days so didn’t see them until I got back. So now I have heads that are not what I ordered and took forever to get.

So what am I doing? First I’m not even calling Great Plains aviation supply about this epic screw up. Luckily I can salvage the situation:

• ​I’m converting the magneto to auto spark plugs through g3i ignition it’s costing me another $230 for them to build the harness with a new cap.
  
• tomorrow I’m dropping the new heads and a cylinder off to be machined properly $100

Honestly, it’s not even worth me calling Great Plains about this. They’ve lost a customer for life. I sent emails, talked to them on the phone even made sure the exact specs for the head were attached to the order. even if they offered to fix it, it would be another three weeks minimum... Hopefully I get lucky at some point with this...