July 16, 2005

After I did the washers for the panel, I moved onto the fuel pump assembly. Namely, putting it in the plane proper and routing a fuel line from the pump forward to the firewall. I got my 90 degree bulkhead fittings from Spruce during the week, so I now have the parts to complete it. I’m still waiting for my banjo fittings to show up from Andair in the UK. Their quality is awesome, but man, it takes forever to get stuff.

Here’s the pump end.

Here it is in the plane… Getting the length right was tough, and as you can see, I ended up snaking the line a bit. I didn’t want to put any stress on the fittings. I also put some bolts intot he nutplate holes that are there for the Facet type fuel pumps. This being a quickbuild, these are already done. I made the most of the doubler though for the bulkhead fitting.

While browsing the McMaster-Carr site for the fibre washers, I decided to see what valves they had for my alternate static source. Bob next door said he had a static valve that might work, but he said it may be a little big. I found a valve at McMaster that looked like it might work out. It’s pretty small, and looks like a toggle switch when mounted so I can put a red booty on it. Here I mounted it to a small piece of angle in order to space it back like all the other toggle switches in the plane. I got lucky with the barbed fitting in the end of it. It was one that came with my AOA Pro. This valve uses 10-32 threads, and fit’s in a 7/16" panel hole.

Here is the faceplate for the centre console with some of the stuff placed in there to see how it looked. The LED bars are the trim indicators, and a flap position indicator (I know, I can look out the window!), then up top, cabin heat and parking brake. then alternate static to the right of the trim indicators.

Then, it was back on the centre console. I figured out a way to mount a hinge for the armrest lid. I cut a slot with a dremel, just wide enough for the hinge to fit through, cut a length of hinge, drill a bunch of holes in it for epoxy to bite in to, slid the hinge in the slot and epoxied it in. Ain’t going anywhere that! It was very humid today, so it took a while to set up. I’m leaving it overnight in fact.

I also did some filling and sanding of the centre console while I was making a mess with epoxy. Here is a shot of the thing after some sanding and SuperFil. Tomorrow, I hope to get this thing primed.