October 16, 2005

I spent the whole day working on centre console stuff, mainly getting all the control cables figured out. I received my order from Van’s that consisted of a throttle and prop control cable yesterday, which was nice. I wasn’t expecting it to be here until sometime next week!

I cut out the front of the console finally, and riveted the nutplates in. This opening serves as an installation aid so I can get the console in and out if need be when it’s all done. All the wiring will be inside here too, so access would be nice in case it all goes wrong. Here you can see I temporarily mounted the front faceplate on the console. This was to help me figure out the cabin heat and parking brake cables.

The control cables have a rather long sleeve for the pushrod part and locking mechanism for the knob, so it has to poke through the console. I just made some holes and put some snap bushings in there to support them a bit. I was a bit concerned about this, as I don’t want to see any cables in the footwells of the plane, and these looked like they might be visible. They actually turned out to be quite well tucked up behind the panel. Perfect.

While I was mucking about with these things, I pulled one of the knobs out too far and the ball bearing shot out somewhere. Well, I was hunting all over for it. I looked in the other cable to see how big it was. Exactly an 1/8", pretty damn small. I wrote it off, and figured I could just order another bearing from McMaster-Carr or something, but about two hours later, I stumbled across it! Amazing really. My hangar floor is covered in aluminium shavings, filings offcuts, etc. The chances of finding a 1/8" ball bearing amongst this lot are pretty slim. I guess things seem to be having a way of working out.

Now the tricky part… Throttle and prop cables. I want to try to get the throttle cable to run inside the centre console, down under the fuel pump cover, forward under the centre tunnel cover and then through the firewall, all out of sight. Well, this was a bit more of a challenge. I think it’s going to work out though. I want the prop to run up behind the panel, across and around to the firewall pass through, also out of sight. Unfortunately, the way the quadrant is set up, I have to have the throttle cable above the prop cable, which is counter to what I’m trying to achieve. Here, I made a cable bracket out of some angle. I put a nice doubler on the outside of the console. I know this sounds horrible, but it actually looks OK. It’s polished too!

Here you can see how I routed the cables to miss the fuel selector. This worked out quite nicely. I originally wanted to run the cable bracket all the way across the console and glass it into place, but ‘servicability sensibility’ (as I call it) took over and persuaded me to make it removable.

In this shot, you can see how the cables run to the quadrant a little better. The prop cable is attached to the lever a little closer to the camera than the throttle cable. They look pretty close, but the miss by miles. This shows the positions half way through their travel.

Next up was a trial fit in the plane. I had a bit of fun jiggling it all around to get it in with all the cables shooting out the front of the thing, but I managed to get it in OK! I left this image full size so you all could get a better look at it! I must remember to order some white booties for the FADEC switches, and a red one for the alternate static valve down there on the centre console.

Here’s where the throttle cable comes out the firewall. I tried to keep it as low as I could and maintain some tool clearance around it. Hopefully, this position will work OK for the centre tunnel cover. I may have to make a small chamfer in the corner of the cover for the cable to pass under, but that shouldn’t be too hard to do.

Well, I ordered a 55" cable for the throttle, and a 60" for the prop. I actually measured these lengths, and figured they’d be about right. Of course, they’re not! In the end, I ended up using the 60" for the throttle and I may have to order a new one for the prop. We’ll see. I’ll play around a bit with the routing for the prop and see what I come up with. Oh yeah, and these cables…. I ordered them from Van’s AIRCRAFT, obviously for use on an AIRCRAFT, and what does the lable on them say? Yep, you guessed it… NOT FOR USE ON AIRCRAFT! What’s all that about?!

Here is the routing for the throttle cable, going down and under the fuel pump cover. Even with these bends, the cable action is pretty nice and smooth. From here, it’s pretty much a straight shot to the throttle body.

Since I was working in this area, it was time to put the banjo fittings on the fuel selector and start plumbing the fuel lines to the wings. This is all part of the whole centre console assembly too, so it basically has to be done now. Here, the banjo fittings are on. These fit easily in between the centre console sides, unlike the 90 degree AN fittings I tried previously. Once I get the angles set up, I need to safety wire these in position.

Here, I’ve started the plumbing to the left wing. Since the bend was so tight, I had to put a loop in the tube. No problem really, makes it easier to fit ultimately, and it gives me some tweaking room if I need it.

There’s rather a lot of debris around here isn’t there?!!! Maybe I should drag out the vacuum cleaner!

I didn’t have enough 3/8" tube to do the right side today, so basically, that was it for the day. Before I left, I put some epoxy around the nuts that are holding the front faceplate on the centre console. This should be set tomorrow, and it’ll be easily removable. Quite a good day today with some decent progress, even if I did have the throttle and prop cable assemblies apart what seemed like a thousand times!