May 11, 2006

I had a bit longer at the hangar this afternoon/evening. First up, I removed all the baffles and the snorkel, and took them to a paint shop to be painted. They’ll be done with them sometime next week, then they can go on the plane for good! I was contemplating leaving them bare aluminium for a while until I’d ironed out any bugs with the plane, but then I thought about how horrible it would be to have to take all this stuff apart when the plane is flying! Ugh! Paint ’em now!

I darted about the firewall forward a bit tonight. I recieved a bunch of orders from Pegasus, Aircraft Spruce, and McMaster Carr, so I could get a lot of small things done. First was the manifold pressure line. Here’s the 45 degree connection to the cylinder head.

And the hose going to the firewall bulkhead connector.

I fitted the 5/8"-18 nut to the tach sender. This is stainless steel, but I couldn’t find one with a natural finish. Oh well. I could polish it I guess! I also had to shorten the batery -ve lead to clear the sender.

Next hose job! Oil pressure line. This one has to go to the manifold on the firewall, because I have a pressure sender for the FADEC SBC to send to the Blue Mountain EFIS 1, and a pressure switch to operate the hobbs meter.

I’ve taken a lot of poor quality photos tonight! Here’s the manifold on the firewall. I need to make a link pipe that goes from one part to another to feed the two senders that will be in here. I’m waiting for an adaptor fro the FADEC sender. I did mount the hobbs pressure switch though. You’ll see in a later piccy. Me being really clever an’ all, I don’t think I’ve left enough room to bend a link pipe across the manifiold. Hmmm. Glad I used temporary nuts for now. I’m goig to be putting nut plate on this thing too.

Safety wired the prop. This was a task. It’s not very easy getting in there. I’m not the greatest safety wirer either.

I ran the field wire to the secondary alternator. I’ve been having some discussion with Aart in the Netherlands about the hall effect sensor that you can use for the SB-1 regulator with this. We were wondering where it should go. Heck, I don’t even have one! Hmmm. Do I need one? My uinderstanding is that the SB-1 is set a volt lower than the main regulator, so it’ll cut in automatically if voltage drops due to a dead primary alternator. We’ll see what our discussion reveals.

Here you can also see the hobbs pressure switch in the manifold.

Another question…. Will the sniffle valve work correctly in this orientation? I hope so, because it won’t fit vertically because my exhaust is in the way! Maybe I’ll give Mahlon a call tomorrow and ask.

I secured the main alternator ‘B’ lead to the engine mount. I will secure closer to the other end on the engine. The key here is to prevent strain on the terminals.