Baffle 707D bracket

It seems from my research that this bracket basically does not fit, unless Van's intended for you to bend/flax the baffle forward. This is the fit between the bracket and the aft baffle plates. Why would Van's go to the expense of making a bracket that it seem everyone throws out or modifies to make it work?

My engine is Mattituck TMX, is there a big difference between a standard Lycoming and the Lyclones?

Cheers

Trim

Isn't the idea to slightly trim the bottom of the cross baffle to be a tight fit against the case?

When it's trimmed the baffle will fit against the bracket.

az_gila said:

Isn't the idea to slightly trim the bottom of the cross baffle to be a tight fit against the case?

When it's trimmed the baffle will fit against the bracket.

Click to expand...

+1

I had to do a good bit of trimming off the bottom edge of the aft baffle to get it to fit right. Also, perhaps spacers are okay there if need them.

RVG8tor said:

is there a big difference between a standard Lycoming and the Lyclones?

Click to expand...

There can be.

The baffles are designed around the CAD model produced by Lycoming for their standard parallel valve engine.
They even change the casting molds from time to time, so a minor amount of trimming might be needed, even on the late model Lycomings.

Other engines could require significantly more. All of the bracket attach locations are probably the same (but even that is not guarantied) so the best approach is probably to trim the baffle parts as needed to match the engine case and cyls as needed.

Just another example of the extra effort that can be required when builders stray off the "sticking with a standard build" path.

I had the same problem

Mike,

I also have a TMX-360 and had the same problem. I ended up cutting off the end of the bracket and remaking the part of the bracket the attaches to the engine and then riveted the two parts together. It worked out OK. Here's the only picture I could find.

Trim aft baffles to fit

As others have said, trim the bottom edges of the aft baffles so that they conform to the contours of the engine case while mating perfectly with the bracket.

By the way, "TMX" just signifies that it was Mattituck who assembled your engine. The relevant question is, who's parts (engine case, etc.) did they use? The possibilities I'm aware of are Lycoming, ECI, and Superior. As has been suggested, there may be some variation in the shapes of the castings from Lycoming vs. ECI vs. Superior. But the differences, if any, should be relatively minor, and you should be able to make the baffles work with only minor trimming.

Just as a data point, my engine was assembled (by Aerosport) using ECI components. And after trimming the aft baffles as I described above, I have a perfect fit in that region. Before trimming, it looked very much like your photo.

trimmin more did the trick

I kept trimming and this allows the baffle to move aft, you have to get the bottom of the baffle almost to the height of the upper part of the engine where it just starts to curve.

This took me a couple of hours but the bracket works just fine now.

Thanks for all the help.

Cheers