October 30, 2005

I was actually at the hangar a bit longer than this today, but Cameron was here, and my friend Colin came by so we spent a whole lot of time hangar flying. Anyway, first task was to put the alternator on. I guess this could be an electrical thing, but it’s firewall forward too. It was pretty easy really. I haven’t put it in yet permanently, because I want to check clearances to the cowling when I get to that stage. Then, I’ll tighten everything down and safety it.

I have a bit of hard contact between the alternator and the prop governor line. My line is flexible for some reason. I’ve seen others with a rigid pipe. I’m going to have to work this one out somehow. I also ran the wiring to the alternator. I need to order up a couple of ANL current limiters too, to go on the firewall for the leads from both alternators. I don’t know why I didn’t just do this ages ago.

Next, I put the exhaust on to see how it looked. I’m really not so sure I like it. My main concern is that it sticks out and down way too far. Ideally, the collector should be a little further forward of the firewall, and the angle should be closer to the belly of the plane. Here are some shots. See what you think…

I decided to wheel it outside for a different perspective. The distance between the belly and the lowest point of the tailpipe is 7". I might call Aircraft Exhaust up and see if there’s anything that can be done about this. I don’t know, maybe in a level flight attitude, it won’t look as bad?

I’m expecting my prop in the next few days too, so I’ll be taking some time off work to pick it up and put it on the plane. It’d be nice if it was tomorrow, but probably more likely to be Tuesday. We’ll see.