May 26, 2006

I took a day off work today so I could make some progress towards getting the plane started. The baffles were ready today, so I picked them up, and started putting them on and getting everything else wrapped up that was waiting because of them.

Here I’ve fitted the oil cooler. The wire routing for the FADEC harness worked out OK, and missed the cooler without a problem.

I threaded through all the cables and the fuel hose, and fitted their respective grommets. This shows the fuel hose and the cylinder heater harness pass throughs. In the background, you can see where the FADEC harness comes through.

Here’s the right side showing the FADEC harness going to the fuel spider. I need to tie this up a little to stop it wiggling around. For some reason I had some hazy pictures today. I’m wondering if it was the humidity?!

On the left side there’s only fuel injector harness. Still need to secure it here. It’s secure along the spine of the engine, I just need it to be a bit sturdier over the cylinders.

A general shot showing how it’s all looking!

I went and safety wired the baffles together. SOme people use a threaded rod. I was tempted to use threaded rod too, but I thought I’d see how the safety wire works out. It’s actually not as hokey is it seems, as long as you use washers to stop the wire eating through the baffle material. There’s not that much force on the parts either in this position, so safety wire seems like it’ll work fine.

You can see the tubing over the wire to prevent chaffing.

The cabin heat hose from the baffle to the heat muff. To get this baffle quadrant on, I was forced to remove the dipstick tube. That meant breaking out the safety wire pliers again!

I ran the heater harness and the left side fuel injector harness along the spine of the engine case.

And secured the fuel injectors on all four cylinders. Once I’d done this, I turned on the Master, then the EFIS, and turned on the fuel pump. It went up pretty quickly to 30psi, so I switched it off and then went to look for leaks. Not a one! That’s what we like to see. It’s nice to be able to pressurize your system and check for leaks like that. Beats finding them when the engine is running!

During the baffle installation, I went around the engine and made sure all the hoses and fittings were tightened. I’d been loosening stuff all over the place to get things on and off the engine as time has gone by, so this was a good time to tidy all that stuff up.

I need to get some RTV to use to seal the snorkel to the throttle body. I’ll install that tomorrow. Then, I’m on to getting the centre console in the plane and getting the throttle and prop cables rigged. Looks like I’m on schedule for a Sunday morning start up!