Firewall Forward VI
1/13/2005 6 Hours
I was on my own today at the hangar as Dave went down to Dayton for the weekend to see friends. I did some firewall forward stuff, tidying up loose ends here and there.
The exhaust arrived yesterday, so naturally, it was the first thing for me to set about doing today. This should be the final iteration now. It fits absolutely perfectly. I'm very impressed indeed! Chris at Aircraft Exhaust did a fantastic job to make sure we were happy with our exhaust system. Sure enough, we are! It's gorgeous! Here's a shot of the old issue, showing new clearance. Perfect. Thanks Chris for such a great job!
Next, I decided to tackel the wiring at the back of the engine. This was one of those tasks that I wasn't looking forward to, but it turned out OK. I worked out the routing proper, connected everything that needed connecting and I even started looking into hoses.
Here, I've connected the FADEC ignition sensors and tie wrapped them. I need to safety wire these to, just to make triple sure thay don't come off!
Same with the FADEC ECU's. Tie wrapped. Needs safety wire. It's fun getting in here now, let me tell you.
Here, I managed to get an Adel clamp of the oil filter adapter to hold all the FADEC harness in position. I might need one more soemwhere, but I still need to work it out. Nearly all nice and tidy now too.
Here, I made a fuel hose to go from firewall to fuel pump. Because of the prop governor mount, I had to buy a $47 90 degree hose end fitting. Ouch! There's another one for the othe side of the fuel pump too! Double ouch! I should probably firesleeve this. Something else to order from aircraft spruce!
2/19/2005 6 Hours
I was tinkering about a bit and decided to connect the tacho sensor. I got a 12" extension from Van's, and it turned out to be exactly the same as the 24" one I got from Spruce, except it was 12" shorter. Fancy that! So now I had it all figured out. I had to dismantle the fittings off the sensor to connect the tach extension to it! I ended up using the longer one of the two anyway, as it was a little more flexible (both in bendiness and locatability (is that even a word?)). Here's the engine end. I need to get the standby alternator on to really come up with a good routing and sensor location.
Here's the sensor itself. I was thinking I could attach it to the engine mount somewhere. At least then it'll be easy to get to when it fails and needs replacement. I hear these fail quite often.
3/12/2005 9 Hours
I removed the fuel feed line to the fuel pump, and put some firesleeve on it. You have to be careful with the firesleeve length, because as you bend the hose through it's routing, the firesleeve 'shrinks'! So, make it a bit longer on the hose, and you should be fine.
Here it is installed again. For good this time.
Today was a firewall forward day. I've been putting off the baffles for so long now, it's time I just bit the bullet and got on with them. Yesterday, I went out and bought a brake press so I could finally bend metal. It's not a brilliant one, but it was fairly cheap. It will do for what I need it for. I needed one with removable tabs so I could bend a box form. Unfortunately, when they loaded it into the back of the Explorer, they crashed the fork lift truck into the bottom of my tailgate. Great. Now I have to wait for their head office to call me to see what's going to happen about fixing it. There's always something.
Baffles. The first task was to make a box form to fill in the step above the oil cooler. Most builders seem to do this, as it neatens up the flexible seal routing. It took me a while to figure out the bending brake and how to get good bends from it. Once I had it sussed though, it worked out pretty well. There was some obligatory cursing during the whole process, but generally it turned out pretty well! Clayton came by to witness the events of the day too, and to lend a helping hand when I needed it. Cheers mate!
Here I am (scruffy git) having a celebratory cup o' tea after completing the rear left baffle. The only thing I need to do to this is rivet on the spacer to the mounting hole closest to the engine mount. Doing that will make it a lot less fiddly to assemble this thing to the engine.
Here is the whole ensemble on the engine. It's a little tricky to get it on, but you can wiggle it in there.
Here's the oil cooler that this baffle has to support. It's a Stewart Warner 8406R. Seems to be THE oil cooler of choice. Them's some steel fittings waiting to be torqued up in there. It also looks like one of the flanges closest to the engine mount will have to be trimmed down. This is quite common on RV's too.
We progressed on to the right side baffles. I really wanted to get the front left baffle floor done today, but after reading PH-VII's construction log, I saw that they mentioned Dave Parson's snorkle had a much better fit. It looks like there's a part out there that will work out of the box. I was expecting to do some cutting and shutting with mine, since it's for a 200hp engine, but if there truly is one for the 180hp engines, I'll swap it out. I'll call Van's tomorrow to confirm it.
As you can see, most of the rivetting is done now on this side. I still haven't attached it to the front floor. I'm wondering if I'll have to make another floor, because I cut this one quite short, anticipating not having to cut too much off the cowl for the air intake. Turns out I might have to cut more off than I first thought. I need to wait for the new snorkel though first to be really sure.
Here, we put the angle reinforcement on the right rear baffle. It's coming together slowly. It's unbelievable how labour intensive these things are. Nine hours, and that's all we did! Wow.
