I am breaking from the manual at this point. The first assembly in the manual for the fuselage is to mount the stabilizers. I prefer to do that later with this one. I would rather mount the engine and maybe the nosegear (pending arrival) to minimize hangar rash on the tail surfaces.

The engine mounting pretty much followed that manual. I made a drill jig for drilling and tapping the engine mount. First, I sanded that back of each mount flat, then mounted it on the drill jig. The hole was cut and trimmed for the engine to fit comfortably. The thrust line was checked, and I sanded a hair off of the lower engine mount to take care of some up thrust. I ended up with about a 1/16 spinner gap, with the backplate parallel to the spinner ring on the fuselage.

Thr throttle tube was installed per the manual, and operation manually verified.