Front mounting motor in full fuselage ?

[Rudy Taube]

Ideas needed,

Has anyone out there "FRONT" mounted their motor in a "full" fuselage CLPA plane with a standard, narrow front end, like a SV-11? ...... If so, can you please post some photos of your install.

It is a tight squeeze at the very front, but there is room to do it. I would like to use the nice FG cowl if possible. This dictates fitting the front of the motor in this narrow space  to keep to the contours of the front of the plane. The motor can't have the shaft reversed so it needs a front mount. I have an idea on how to do it, but I would rather copy someone who has done it already. ;-) 

Thanks in advance for your help. :-)

[Igor Burger]

 

[Rudy Taube]

THANK YOU IGOR,  PERFECT 

Yours is much more KIS than mine would have been.    I like it.  You saved me several hours of metal work for the overcomplicated design I was going to use. 

Regards, 

[Bob Hunt]

I'm attaching a few photos of the retrofit of a front mount motor into my Genesis Extreme that previously had a rear-mount motor. (Before that it had a PA 40 R Ultra Lite and before that a RoJett .40...)

Note that the photos depict a rear support for the motor shaft. We had been experiencing some bearing problems with the rear mounted motor and decided to add the shaft support when we changed things around, As it turns out, just changing the mounting from rear to front takes most of the load off of the bearing and there is really no need for the shaft support in the rear. We have long since removed it and not only does the motor run just fine without it, it also cools much better!

I've put more than 100 flights on the front mounted motor and have experienced no problems at all. With the rear mounted motor I could hear a pronounced noise at each corner. We concluded that the weight of the motor, prop and spinner coupled with the various precession forces was cantilevering the motor can and it was "coning out" the bearing mount. That noise stopped cold with the front mount and we have experienced no problems whatsoever. Beware, however, that getting sufficient cooling air to the motor with a front mount is more difficult and will require some creative thinking.

Later - Bob Hunt