I have a friend with a KR2 that wants to know how much he can hang on the firewall without doing any mods.
One answer would be to minimize the weight carried by the firewall. If you look at the Falco, another airplane with a wood fuselage, the engine mount attaches at the very edge of firewall and aluminum angles are used to transfer the load to the fuselage sides. The fuselage sides are beefed up as is done in the KR over the main spar. The Falco firewall is a wood frame filled with foamnot solid wood like the KR. If you are able to use a new engine mount to accomplish this I think it would be your best bet. I assume you are talking about an engine of reasonable size, not a 180 hp behemoth.
