1 hour.
Wired the magneto end of both shielded mag wires. It’s a slow process, it seems, filling in the blanks. I still need to do the alternator wires firewall forward, and I’d like to get my temperature probes and other assorted sensors wired in. I have to do the fuel pump load and ground wires also, then I think I can move on to the sticks.
3 hours.
I’ve been on the road the last couple of weeks, and I haven’t exactly been wonderful about updates, so let me give you the big picture. After fiddling around with various combinations of throttle body configurations, I figured out that the way the AFP manual states, with the TB clocked 90 degrees and the arms on the bottom, is the way it’s going to be. This will let me get the mixture cable on a straight run across the bottom of the sump and the throttle cable in at a 45 from the left side. Interference between cable brackets might be a factor, I’ll have to check, but I think I’ll be OK. The only thing that concerns me is the distance from the #1 exhaust pipe to the throttle body and cable. The plan is to use the heat muff as a shield, which should work, as there will be cold air coming into it constantly and carrying away heat radiated from the pipe. This makes the fit a little tight, and there will be a need to shield the cables as well. Fortunately, there is a plethora of products designed to do this very thing. Now, one thing to be aware of is that the shielding must not interfere with the cable operation, and must be effective enough to keep the cable from being damaged, because damaged cables stick. You do NOT want a stuck fuel system cable. Best case scenario is that it sticks open and you have to regulate power on landing by turning the ignition on and off, a digital engine, so to speak. A worse case than that is that it sticks closed and you basically join the engine-out club. Absolute worst is that it catches on fire and burns and you hit a UFO on the way down, provoking an interstellar war while trying to wrestle a burning aircraft to the ground. This, however, is unlikely. Custom brackets will still need to be made, and I think I can make them either from billet aluminum or schteel, but I might have to draw on my uncle’s machining capability for steel. I can also make them from 1/8″ 4130 sheet, so for the first time in my life, I can honestly say I NEED a plasma cutter.
So with the firewall forward install more or less on hold for now, I went on to installing probes and senders. I got the CHT probes installed, K-type wires spliced, and extensions run back to the RDAC on the firewall. These will need dressing and permanent mounting. Oil temp probe is in, and I got my fitting to go from AN3 to AN4 on the oil pressure line. I also re-clocked the right mag so the harness clears the battery. This was interesting. I got a timing box from Sac Sky Ranch, then timed it according to procedure in the manual. Pull the mags, rotate the engine to 20BTC as marked on the flywheel, insert the timing pin in the mag, reinstall. Then connect the timing box and turn the other mag so the lights both go on at the same time. It’s a little more involved than that, but that’s the general ideal.
So with that done, I decided to cut my instrument panel. I cut the hole for the EFIS, which had to be adjusted after someone on VAF mentioned the tube under the glare shield of the canopy. I did the poor-man’s laser technique. Marked it out, masked it off, cut it out with a sabre saw. I’ll post pics when I get a chance. After that, I had to dial in the radio stack. I put all the components on their side with the bezels aligned, then taped them all together. I marked lines on the trays for alignment later, then measured the hole I’d need based on the dimensions of the components minus the trays. Once I got the hole good enough to get all the components in, I lined up the stack to the panel by means of lots of clamps. Then I took the components out of the trays, got out some more clamps, and fastened everything down for drilling. I now have the hole for the stack, the primary angle on either side to hold the stack, and next is the bracket that ties them all together at the back end. I’m going to have to cut the subpanel to account for the GNS430’s massive booty, and the whole thing will be bracketed to the subpanel for extra rigidity.
I also lined up and drilled the holes for the toggle switches above the radio stack. I still need to drill the holes for magneto switches, battery master, and alt e-bus feed to the left of the EFIS, but I need to determine what kind of switchgear I need. I think I’m one switch short, which is puzzling, because I checked my order against my plan several times. I also have to go to Fry’s and pick up some electrical supplies like a warning light and a dimmer for the cockpit lights, but it’s getting to the point where I can start actually wiring things instead of just making wire runs.
I’ll post some pics as soon as I get them off my phone.
4 hours.
I got a call from Don Rivera at Airflow Performance regarding the quandaries of my servo installation. He said I was basically on the right track, but that yes, i’d have to make my own brackets for the throttle and mix cables. Also, there’s no reversing the butterfly. I found about $200 worth of hoses that can go back to Van’s, and I got the temperature probes installed and the extensions run back to the RDAC. I almost got the breather tube done, but I really need to get off the FWF install and go back to wiring and avionics. Basically, I puttered around, unfocused, looking for an easy way into the next step. There isn’t one. I don’t have the cables, hoses, or fittings I need to do more FWF, so screw it, I’m going back to electrical.
This is harder than you might think. Every time I walk past the engine, I find something to distract me. All these little distractions start out as “I wonder if THIS will work.” As a result, I got nothing significant done, other than the installation of a couple of probes and senders. Not that this is a bad thing, but if I had focused on avionics and panel, I could have gotten a lot more done, since I have all the stuff required to get that done.
I’m also looking at the baffles. I suspect I might have some problems where the prop governor sits, and that is going to suck.
4 hours.
I’m convinced an optimist is a pessimist who hasn’t done a firewall-forward installation yet. Let me amend that. With a plug-and-play setup, that optimism might keep going, but with a frankenmotor like mine, the odds are definitely stacked in a bad way. I decided to tackle one thing at a time. First thing is the throttle body arms. I rotated the throttle body so the diaphragm points to 3:00 again, if you’re looking over the nose. I came up with a scenario that should work, but it might require the use of heat shielding on the control cable end, not sure if that’s a no-no or if it’s OK. Take a gander:
Here, we’re looking up at the engine. First thing to check out is the throttle arm. I ground off the outermost hole so it can swing past the exhaust pipe with enough clearance to make me sleep well at night, but it’s still tight in there. The second thing is the mixture arm. If I’m reading it correctly, it’s in the full rich position right now. Push for rich, pull for lean. I have a call into AFP to see if this will work, but I suspect it will. The bracket bolted to the sump is one of the Van’s IO360 brackets. It’s almost perfect, except for the fact that the bolt holes don’t line up for the Superior sump. Another 1/8 of an inch apart from each other and they would.
Close up. Do you see how tight it is in there? This is like a game of Tetris, but none of the pieces are the same shape.
From the left side. If I rotate the TB so the diaphragm is at 12:00, it bangs into that black rod on the starter. No joy there. Plus, it would make cabling suck even worse, and there would be bellcranks and other fun stuff.
This shot shows the potential path for the mixture cable. A small spacer putting the rod end bearing slightly above the mixture arm should get it easily clear of the other arm and bearing.
This is the throttle cable lineup. Since I could clock the throttle arm in any direction I wanted, I got it so the arc is the best compromise for non-interference with the mixture arm, but also I need certainty that there won’t be an over-center condition on the arc swing. there’s still plenty of room to bend the bracket upward, which sends the cable out well clear of the exhaust pipe. I’m trying to keep the rod bearing on top of the arm rather than below it, because I want as little radiated heat as possible soaking the cable. I now need to mock up brackets to make this work.
Oh, and I discovered something disturbing today: a couple of rotation locks that I believe go inside the fuel tanks to stop the fuel pickup tube fittings from backing out. I’m pretty sure though, that those were the old kind, and the new kind are what’s installed in the tanks. I may have to run a scope in there and check it out, but if there’s no rotation lock on there at all, taking that apart to redo it is going to blow, long and hard.
I read all the warnings. “Use a Van’s-approved engine or you’ll have a ton of trouble making everything fit.” Or this one: “By the time you convert the engine to what you want, you’ll have spent just as much money as if you’d bought new.” Tinker or fly? So, I now have a laundry list of issues related to my particular setup that will now require no small amount of customization, some of it in steel, which I haven’t had much to do with since shoehorning large snowmobile engines onto the backs of go-karts back in the mid-80’s. Here’s the list of fun so far:
-Throttle body interferes with the starter. The Kelley Aerospace starter has a retaining bolt on it that prevents the TB from being mounted in the diaphragm-up position.
-Stock brackets won’t work. Either the mixture or the throttle arm goes the wrong way when pushed, so a bellcrank is probably going to be required.
-AFP throttle body won’t play nice with the airbox. More fun with fiberglass.
-Fuel hose from engine pump to TB inlet is too short in any position except the one that won’t work because of the starter.
-Custom-length quadrant cables will be required.
-Throttle and mixture arms interfere with factory-set linkages when oriented in directions that work for me. I’ll need a straight arm from Don at Airflow.
-Right magneto interferes with battery box. Will need to be re-indexed for harness to clear and be retimed.
-Left magneto had to be removed to adjust oil cooler fitting. Timing will need to be reset.
-Breather tube is a little close to the RDAC. Should be OK though.
-Alternator interference unknown at this time, since I haven’t purchased it yet.
-Oil cooler taken off the engine when I got it is cracked. Need a new one.
-Oil pressure fitting is AN3, not AN4, so the supplied hose won’t work. Earl’s doesn’t seem to have a steel expander either.
So should I have listened to the warnings? Waited for a a good deal on an engine with a standard Bendix fuel injection system that wouldnt’ have necessitated an aftermarket, oddball sump? Maybe. Am I kicking myself for not doing so? A little. Thanks to the teardown/rebuild, I’m pretty much out of money and it’s going to take some time to build up reserves. I could probably still fit the cowl, and I can definitely get the avionics and wiring done, but the firewall-forward engineering may be my greatest challenge yet. But I know a guy at Crashspace with a 6-axis mill and a lathe. Van’s Air Force is still my lifeline. And I’m in too deep to quit now.
As I write this, I’m on Alaska Airlines on initial descent into LAX, returning from Vancouver, BC. If human beings can figure out a way to get me online in a big spam can at FL30, I can find a solution to the nearly-overconstrained problem of the firewall forward situation.
I read all the warnings. “Use a Van’s-approved engine or you’ll have a ton of trouble making everything fit.” Or this one: “By the time you convert the engine to what you want, you’ll have spent just as much money as if you’d bought new.” Tinker or fly? So, I now have a laundry list of issues related to my particular setup that will now require no small amount of customization, some of it in steel, which I haven’t had much to do with since shoehorning large snowmobile engines onto the backs of go-karts back in the mid-80’s. Here’s the list of fun so far:
-Throttle body interferes with the starter. The Kelley Aerospace starter has a retaining bolt on it that prevents the TB from being mounted in the diaphragm-up position.
-Stock brackets won’t work. Either the mixture or the throttle arm goes the wrong way when pushed, so a bellcrank is probably going to be required.
-AFP throttle body won’t play nice with the airbox. More fun with fiberglass.
-Fuel hose from engine pump to TB inlet is too short in any position except the one that won’t work because of the starter.
-Custom-length quadrant cables will be required.
-Throttle and mixture arms interfere with factory-set linkages when oriented in directions that work for me. I’ll need a straight arm from Don at Airflow.
-Right magneto interferes with battery box. Will need to be re-indexed for harness to clear and be retimed.
-Left magneto had to be removed to adjust oil cooler fitting. Timing will need to be reset.
-Breather tube is a little close to the RDAC. Should be OK though.
-Alternator interference unknown at this time, since I haven’t purchased it yet.
-Oil cooler taken off the engine when I got it is cracked. Need a new one.
12 hours.
This is a tale of the 36 hours beginning Thursday the 3rd. It started with a text from Shelley, who said my EFIS had arrived from MGL Avionics. The unboxing revealed this:
This is the MGL Stratomaster Odyssey EFIS. There are many like it, but this one is mine. I hooked it up with the backup battery, plugged in the AHRS and compass and flew over SMO. My house is about a mile away from SMO, so I set the barometer high enough to see over the hills and rolled the sensors around. The EFIS responded brilliantly. Setup should be a snap. After that, I put it away in its box and went back to work. While I was there, I got a call from Tim at Tim’s Aircraft Engines, who informed me that my engine was done. Friday morning I went to pick it up. After some interesting work with the hoist, the guys managed to get it into the back of the truck and get it strapped down and I was able to bring it home.
So, to recap. We started with this eBay special:
Gutted it for the conversion, but found spalling on the lifters. Boo.
This stage is pre-assembly at Tim’s Aircraft Engines:
And here it is coming out the back of the truck at home on Friday:
It’s so. Freaking. Beautiful.
And here it is, ready to go.
Dave had promised me he’s stop by and lend a hand this weekend. He did, bright and early Saturday morning. He bucked some rivets on the antenna and fuel fitting doublers that would have been impossible for me to do with anything but pop rivets. After that, we were originally going to lay out and cut the panel, but I said why not hang the engine instead? I’ve got all the truly annoying firewall stuff done, Dave’s here, and I can cut the panel on my own.
So I set up the engine hoist (this thing has been useful more times than I can count now).
Getting ready to lift it into place. Some guys have done this on their own, but I just don’t see how.
Shelley stopped by the shop to see what all the cursing was about, and fortunately she had her camera.
I asked her to document the process. It wasn’t that bad, really.
Watch your fingers, guys.
The last bolt is a complete bastard. If it isn’t, run out and buy a lottery ticket right then and there.
No, I’m not about to beat the engine into submission with the Red Stick of Death. I’m holding the engine hoist bar above my head in celebration. This is the Tin Man’s heart transplant right here, a significant milestone on the way to being finished, or at least flying.
One thing we had to do was take the fuel servo off and rotate it 90 degrees so the inlet was on the side. This is per the AFP manual. This has the effect of putting the control arms for mixture and throttle on the bottom, where there’s just barely enough room to get control cables to them. Unfortunately, none of the hoses supplied in the Van’s FWF kit work for this configuration, so I’ll have to send them back and get some custom ones made at Earl’s.
(Update: turns out the hoses are probably OK. I forgot that between the firewall and the fuel servo is a rather large and unmistakeable engine-driven fuel pump that has a hose going both into, and out of it. This will more than make up for the discrepancy in length.)
Charged with the rush of success, that being measured by the fact that the engine didn’t fall off and crush one of us to death or disability, we tackled the exhaust. After losing an hour to the fact that we both caught a case of the stupids when it came to the heat muff, we got it all hooked up. trimming the stainless steel support tubes dulled up my bandsaw blade, but it worked long enough to get the job done. Fortunately I had a spare.
Today was rather anticlimactic. All I did was fabricate the mount for the EFIS backup battery and ponder bracketry for a while. Of course, it was Super Bowl Sunday, so we all went over to Dave and Peggy’s to watch the game.
Dave, thanks a gazillion for all your help. You get the first passenger flight, if you want it. And if Shelley doesn’t.
5 hours.
Yesterday, I should have stayed in bed. It was that bad. I started out the day by attempting to mount the RDAC (engine monitor module) on the firewall. I did this by drilling out one rivet in the F-601L stiffener along the top of the firewall, then match-drilling the rest of the holes. Would have been a great plan, except when I was drilling the second hole in the firewall and stiffener, something moved and I put the hole about 3/32 of an inch below where it was supposed to go. Boom, violated edge distance. I have an email in to Van’s tech support to find out whether I’m going to have to replace that stiffener, which would suck like nothing has ever sucked before. It would involve removing the engine mount and the landing gear. The other possibility, since I’m not really placing a load on the stiffener with the 5-ounce RDAC, is that they’ll tell me to “build on.” If that happens, I just have a slightly crooked RDAC, but otherwise it’s fine. So I’m kind of freaking out about that, and really hoping I haven’t bought myself a ton of work with this one stupid mistake.
Then it started to get better: The LA public library emailed and said my copy of William Gibson’s ‘Zero History’ was available for pickup, so Shelley and I rode our bikes down there to get it. But on the way home I almost got run over by an idiot backing out of the car wash. What does this have to do with airplane building? Not much, other than it’s difficult to work on critical things in a state of elevated stress. But I needed a win of some kind, so I decided it was time to mount the heated pitot tube in the wing. Of course, that ballooned into wing wiring.
This pic doesn’t show the tubes, but I originally had the AoA and pitot lines running through the two grommets in the rib in the bottom of the frame.
But it’s a couple of years later, and I now know a lot more about EM interference than I did back then, as well as what equipment I’ll have on board. I pretty much rewired the whole thing. First thing I did was pull out all the wires and cut a section in the PVC conduit to allow the pitot heat wires and AoA tube an exit to mid-wing. I rounded off the edges of the PVC to mitigate chafing, then ran AoA tube, NAV antenna wire, pitot heat, landing light, and position light wires down the conduit, breaking out the pitot heat wires and the AoA tube, while sending the rest down to the wingtip. The strobe cable I ran through one of the grommets from wing root to wingtip, which will help isolate the strobe pulses from the NAV antenna. Supposedly RG400 cable keeps this from happening, but I’m going to be making a lot of connections at the wing root (building in the guest house, remember?), so I want to keep the strobe cable and the antenna as separated as possible. Unfortunately, I can’t close the deal, because I need two more 1 1/16″ Adel clamps for the cut ends of the conduit, otherwise they’ll vibrate against the ribs. Those should show up from ACS in a couple of days, but it really irks me to leave things unfinished because I don’t have supplies. It makes more to double check later.
The other wing got the same treatment, but I’d already cut a break in that conduit to allow for autopilot wiring. I still ran the strobe cable through the grommets near the spar, because I’m not terribly interested in having the strobes make the autopilot twitch. Also, depending on the performance of the Archer NAV antenna, I might put another one in the right wing for a second NAV radio at some point.
After all that, I didn’t get the pitot heat module actually mounted. That’s next.
3 hours.
Yesterday I took a long lunch and drove down to TOA (Zamperini Field in Torrance) and hung out with Matt at MGL Avionics for a demo of the Voyager EFIS. The Voyager is the Odyssey’s little brother, but it’s essentially the same EFIS. Matt showed me a lot of the features and a quick run-through of navigation techniques, as well as walked me through the setup screens for various aircraft parameters, and If I wasn’t sold before I walked in the door, I certainly was when I left. I was going to buy everything on the spot, but their stock got cleaned out over the holidays and they’re waiting for a fresh shipment from MGL South Africa.
If you go to the MGL Avionics website, you’ll see some video of the EFIS in action, but I have to tell you, the images on the website do not do justice to the actual unit. On the site, the screen looks really loud and playskool, but on the EFIS, it’s as high-quality and pleasing to the eye as any of the Garmin or Dynon full-synvis offerings. The unit itself is a very nice powdercoated black and the buttons are a nice metallic silver, with extremely good tactile response. My only gripe is a minor one: Terrain above you on the HSI flashes red. Not a primary, saturated red, but the flashing is annoying. I assume this is to let you know that you are potentially flying into a mountain, but a nice option would be to turn off the flashing unless you’re within a certain distance of the terrain.
I wrote a check and left with an RDAC X-D engine monitor module, while Matt packaged up the probes and senders to ship out later. All in all, a very good experience.
After work, I went home to find my shipment from B & C had arrived. Problem is, I ordered two extra E-bus diodes, so now I have to ship them back. Lesson: Always review your online order when the “review order” page comes up. I did manage to get one of them mounted, but I didn’t have my computer with me at the time, so I couldn’t wire it based on my schematic. I also got the 60 amp current limiter for the main bus mounted on the firewall. That was a 10 minute job that turned into an hour because I had to make a doubler and rivet it to the firewall, which sucked for mainly ergonomic reasons.
I’m also ordering the MGL current sensor to replace the 50mV shunt. I was originally going to go with this, then decided against it, now I’m going with it again. It simplifies wiring, and Matt has assured me that it shouldn’t be so messed up by the Earth’s magnetic field that it will be unreliable.
Tonight, when I get home, I’ll wire the E-bus feed and diode, then maybe clean up some wiring back in the Jeffries tube.
5 hours.
Oh yeah, it was a good day. Not only did it not require the use of an AK-47, I got a lot of momentum going on firewall-forward wiring. The overall schematic is still rather nebulous, but it’s based more or less on Bob Nuckolls’s Aeroelectric Connection, drawing Z11. In this scenario, there’s a main bus, an endurance bus, and a small always-hot bus. I’m toying with the idea of deleting the always-hot bus and just putting in a switch for the alternate e-bus feed because quite honestly, an always-hot bus is an excellent opportunity to drain every last molecular twitch out of an otherwise healthy battery.
Also, with the acquisition of a Garmin GNS430W, my avionics stack is now complete. EFIS, audio panel, transponder, nav/comm/gps, done. Good god, I’d love a cigarette right about now… But the upshot of this is that the the electrical picture is now complete. I have to provide power for these devices, plus the various other implements of flight, namely trim, strobes, lights, and autopilot servos. How does that work? Common wisdom is to start at the battery and work your way back. Instead, I ran loads for lighting and strobes, and today I ran starter and e-bus feed, and they’ll collide behind the panel in a Gotterdammerung of switchgear and fast-on tabs.
So the next step is, how to get the electrons from where they are to where they need to be? I had a few simple rules, gleaned from the Aeroelectric Connection and the mighty oracle of Van’s Air Force, to wit:
1. Thou shalt not run thy strobe cables alongside thy data cables.
2. Thou shalt not run thy data cables alongside thy power wires
3. Thou shalt provide ample room to service thy components after the holy top deck skin is on.
4. Thou shalt not run thy wires below tubes which carry fuel, for the drips from leaks onto that which arcs may beget the inferno.
5. Thou shalt not allow breath or light to pass between cabin and engine compartment.
6. Thou shalt not expose thy wires to sharp metal edges.
The first step was to figure out where to make holes in the firewall for pass-through of electrical cable and sensor data.
A little off from my original guesstimate, but this’ll do. A 1-inch hole accommodates the SafeAir1 firewall Passthrough, a stainless steel gizmowith a rounded outlet to let wires exit in any direction without chafing on one side, and get sealed with fireproof tape and goop on the other.
After a little cleanup, it looks OK.
My original estimate for the size of the MGL RDAC engine monitor module was way off, and MGL doesn’t actually publish the dimensions of the unit in the installation guide, which is problematic. So I scoured the newly-minted mglavionicsusers.org forum and found the answer I needed, then made this ghetto-ass mockup from the battery box packaging and a roll of blue masking tape. This made me reconsider the location for the data wire hole. In theory, there should only be one data wire going aft, that of the RDAC itself. All the engine probes and sensors should go from the engine to the RDAC.
How do you make a meal out of stainless steel? Chew slowly. Everybody gets all weird about stainless steel, and true, it’s a whore to work with, but remember, if you can scratch it, you can cut it. This is a 1″ hole saw, about three bucks from B&B hardware. The trick is to dunk the end of it in Boelube and go SLOWLY. Make your pilot hole with a #40, then move up to 1/4″, which is the size of the hole saw’s pilot bit. This one’s so dull it won’t go through warm cheese, but it serves as a good guide for the hole saw. Then, if the teeth of the hole saw are sharp at all, you should be able to grind your way through the firewall fairly easily. Keep it from heating up. If it starts to smoke, put more Boelube on it. The amazing torque of this Makita cordless drill is also helpful. It’s relentless. If you’re working above the battery, cover the battery with a sheet of plastic or something. You don’t want stainless steel chips grinding away between your battery and the firewall.
For added fireproofing, I used a bead of my leftover Fire Barrier 2000 around the FPT (firewall pass through) flange, just to seal the deal. Not that it’s very necessary; you get pretty much an airtight lock when the two halves are screwed together with the firewall between them.
And there you have it. Starter load wire, main bus feed, and e-bus feed, all going through the firewall just like they’re supposed to. What this photo doesn’t show is the firesleeve I forgot to put on the outside of the FPT before I ran the wires through it. It also doesn’t show the master contactor load wire I put in shortly after. I put the fire sleeve on and clamped it down with one of the hose clamps provided in the kit.
Since I was feeling inordinately proud of myself, I figured I throw the engine mount isolators on there. Still not sure how they go, I’ll have to check, but the red bolt protection nipples are a nice touch.
Up in the corner next to the VA-168 manifold, you can see the second FPT. This will carry a data cable from the RDAC back to the EFIS, with room for future additions should I wish to take my life in my hands with some sort of electronic ignition.
And here I am, sitting in the focus of the Dynafocal brainprobe. Maybe I can infuse it with some of my own sentience, such as it is.
I just got off the phone with my cousin, Navy SEAL and former SDV electronics tech, who assures me, despite my misgivings, that the switchgear on the panel and the power routing is not a problem. Nor is anything else. Where it gets tricky is the audio wiring, where impedances must be matched and other arcane spells must be cast. I’m going to bring him out here from Yuma for the hard stuff, I think.