January 2004

No building

No building

I took most of the day to install the oil and water heat exchanger onto the aircraft and to get the #@$& oil and water hoses to fit.  One job I had to do first was to make up some type of cover to reduce the size of the hole where the rudder pedals go.  I used a bit of scrap left over from the firewall and it proved to be easier than I thought.

I took some advice from various sources regarding routing of oil hoses. John Hurst at Europa replaced the hose that comes out of the bottom of the engine with a piece of Aeroquip 666, which is steel braded Teflon..  The only problem with this is that the banjo fitting is 12mm and the hose is 1/2",  John used two hose clips and told me that it was worked for fine for the last two years.  The only departure I made from Johns suggestion was that I routed it to the port side of the engine and took the long route to the oil tank.  I intend to fit an intercooler at some time in the future so I will need to move the oil tank to that side so at least the hose is point in the right direction.

Troy sent me a few pictures of what he did and I copied his idea of running the oil hose down the front of the engine and P clipping it in place at one of the gearbox bolts.

The last thing I did was to add some heat reflecting tubing to the oil hose that is under the engine that goes back to the oil cooler.

While I was in the mood for plumbing I ran the fuel hoses between the manifold and the forward and reverse flow fuel sensors.

I pretty well broke the back of the engine sensor wiring today.  I got the forward and reverse fuel flow sensors, CHT, oil pressure and oil temperature sensors wired up.

Installed & Wired up CHT's, fuel flow sensors, oil pressure and oil temperature sensors.  Apart from the oil pressure sensor I was able to test everything out with the heat gun. The first thing I discovered was that I had wired the CHT sensors to the EHT inputs.  This probably would not have mattered in most cases but I had shortened and terminated the EHT leads to the EIS, and the wires are not copper, they are an alloy.   I sure hope they are going to be long enough to do the EHT probes when the time comes.

I haven't been able to get the warning light on my EIS to work properly so I finally gave up and sent it back to Grand Rapids.  I hope I haven't done anything goofy.  I guess I will find out.

Before I sent it off I did do a check out of the manifold pressure and after setting the gains and offsets on the EIS it measures the correct pressure. The more I have to do with the EIS the more I am coming to like it. 

No building

My new EHT probes arrived from Grand Rapids today so I fitted them up.  They screw into some nipples already welded on the exhaust pipes and are much neater than the type with a hose clip.  Fortunately the leads were the exact length to fit the wires I had shortened and terminated in error on the weekend.  I guess you can have a win sometimes.

I had a go at putting on the bottom cowling for the first time since painting and apart from having to trim a bit of the seals around the heat exchangers everything fitted up okay, or, so I thought.

I put on the air filter only to find out that it hits the NACA vent, so I had a few cycles of carefully trimming back the bottom of the vent until I had the clearance it needed.

Thursday 8

I didn't get much time in the workshop tonight but I was determined to do something.  I discovered that the push button switch on my control stick would not operate the trim servo.  I either had to set up 4 transistors in a bridge configuration or add a relay.  I then discovered that Ray Allen Co sold a product to solve my exact problem so I ordered one.  It arrived today so I at least was able to crimp a plug and socket onto the wires.

No building

It was a slow day today.  I had a party at my house last night and I think I am getting a bit old for hanging out to the wee hours of the morning.  I fitted the Ray Allen relay deck so my trim switch on the control column would work and tested it out.  As usual the longest part of the job is labeling the wires and documenting my work.  I cleaned up a few other odd jobs, like bolting down the heat box, terminating the tachometer wiring and connecting up the external air temperature probe.

It was another of those odd jobs days today.  I "think" I won't need to be pulling out the turbo waste gate cable again so I fitted it up to the servo and set the travel.  The servo does a full cycle on power up and its a pretty useful function when your trying to get the cable in the right location.

The next odd job was to put a connector on the cables for the fuel level sensor.  As I mentioned earlier I am going to use the microprocessor based device that Tony K designed.  This meant I have 6 cables that needed to be labeled, crimped and a socket put on.  By the time that is done it accounted for over an hour of time.  I guess all these little jobs add up.

The next termination was for the RS232 input and output for the EIS, at least I didn't have to climb over into the baggage bay and assume unnatural positions to achieve it.

Its really cold outside at the moment, below zero centigrade by a long way and I needed to put a coat of paint on the instrument panel.  The only place I can do that is inside, but it creates a heck of a smell through the whole house.  I bit the bullet and gave it a couple of coats (including the mandatory runs) and vacated the house for the gym to go workout for a couple of hours.  I put it under some heat lamps to dry and in the evening I set to work with some 400 grit and cleaned up the runs. When I had it half decent I gave it a coat of clear and called it quits.  I have no idea how durable this finish will be, but I am keeping my fingers crossed that it will hold up.

Fitted up the kit from Europa to install the plumbing for my manifold pressure transducer on the EIS

I gave the instrument panel a clean up with some polish and it came out pretty well.  I re assembled it and made a label for the intercom and fuel gauge.  I got some "white on clear" for my Brother 1900 label machine and it does a pretty nice job.

My kit for fitting the plumbing up to the manifold pressure sensor turned up today from Europa.  It is a very useful kit, it has a metal fitting to penetrate the fire wall, a moisture trap and all the hose required.  It only took about 30 minutes to fit and it does a pretty nice job.

I sent a note to Grand Rapids Technology to see if it was possible for my EIS 2000 to have more auxiliary inputs.  As expected the answer was no, however for not a lot more money they would swap mine out for an EIS 4000 which has 6 spare inputs over compared to 2 on my unit.  There is a down side though...... the pin outs are different and that will take quite some work to re do.

No building

No building

Friday 16

No building

I didn't get a full day in the workshop today so I only managed to get the trim tabs fitted up to the stabilizers.  Its sure is a nice feeling to put in the screws with lock nuts for the last time. (I hope!)

I fooled around getting the stabilizers balanced.  I tried to be clever by estimating the weight by placing lead shot in a plastic bag and putting it on the mass balance arm.  Unfortunately I didn't get the balance point equivalent to the steel bar and I ended up with it being too light.  It wasn't by much so I got a bunch of big washers and made up the weight. I find that getting the stabilizers on and off still seems very difficult.  I improved things a bit by re aligning the drive pins to make sure that they were exactly parallel with the torque tube.  It was better but still not great.

I pulled the wires though for the push to talk on the  passenger side and crimped on a connector.

No building

No building

No building

No Building

Possibly this weekend marked the onset of 90% done and 90%  to go.  I did nothing but odd jobs all weekend.  Take a look at the list.

Glued down some upholstery,  install Navaids, pushrods & terminated, installed seat belts, shorten the control sticks by 70 mm, mounted the air temperature sensor, terminated the GPS cable, put oil in the engine, labeled the throttle cover plate, calibrated the throttle position, install brush holder for the prop and put on the fuel selector label.

At the end of the day I managed to come up with another list of things just as long to do in the coming weeks.!  I did crank the engine with out the spark plugs in and ran up oil pressure so that was pretty cool!

No building

Chapter meeting, no building

I had shortened the control sticks by 70mm as the teak handles made them too long so this meant that I had to re paint them.  I took a trip out to the hanger to do this because the last time I painted in the basement it stunk the house out for hours.

Thursday 29

I stopped by the auto store on the way home and purchased some 6mm hose to connect up the coolant  bottle. On the advise of John Hurst at Europa I purchased a larger one from the auto store.

I also finished up wiring the passenger side control stick push to talk button and I had to re terminate  the pilots side as the wires where now 70 mm too long.

Friday 30

I purchased a nice SRS compass from Europa and I stuck it on the top edge of the windscreen.  Subsequent to doing that John at Europa told me the they often come un glued.  Had I known that I would have made bracket and bolted it in place, however I tried pulling it off and it sure seemed stuck to me.

Saturday ~ Sunday

Another 90% done and 90% to go weekend.  First order of business was to clean up the workshop.  I couldn't find anything so it was long over due.  As with last week it was a list of little tasks.  

Installed power jack on instrument panel and ran wiring, drilled passengers control stick and bolted in place,  installed the battery, install cowling doors, drilled hinge pins for rudder, glued a foam strip on the bottom of the oil cooler and wired up the compass light.

I did interrupt the day to do something more interesting.  I went out for 1.7 hours and got my bi annual check ride done.  It seems like only yesterday that I did the last one.

Well my goal was to have the aircraft ready to take out to the airport by February.  I am a little bit off with two major tasks left, the re wiring of my EIS and the mounting of the propeller.