« Archives in July, 2013

A Fix and Some Finishing

7 hours.

Although the last three shouldn’t count because I spent them fixing something I should never have had to in the first place.

20130728-192738.jpgThat little corner of aluminum is the bane of my life.    Since I put the wings on, I’ve caught it on shoes, shirts, and finally, the belt on my jeans.   When this happens, it bends.   This time, I bent the crap out of it, so badly, that I had to remove the fasteners on the skin, peel it back, and hammer it flat again.  The light makes it look worse than it is, but it’s still pretty bad.   Fixed now, though.

 

20130728-192751.jpgThe day wasn’t all bad.   I got the fuel pump overflow plumbed.   I used some of the tubing I had from the MAP sensor install to create a flexible link between the output of the fuel pump to the hard line shown here.   The engine wiggles.  The aluminum tubing doesn’t.   I need a flexible line between the two.

20130728-192805.jpgThe fuel sensors concerned me for a minute.   When I connected the wings, I had some little extra wires that I thought I’d run for spares.   I guess this is why you label things.   After some pondering, I realized these were the fuel level sender wires.   Duh.  The good news is that I didn’t have to do any splicing and apparently I cut them to the right length.   A couple of connectors later and I had fuel level, which was, of course, zero.

No luck on the OAT sender though.   Either my EFIS or the probe is bunk.   OAT reads a steady 32 degrees F.  Have to contact MGL for a new one.

Crotch Strap Bracket part 2.

5 hours.

I’d been avoiding it, but today I worked on the right seat crotch strap bracket.   I did the left one before the airport move, and I really should have done this one at home too, but I had bigger fish to fry at the time.   Today I got the bracket drilled and deburred, and got 3 out of 4 platenuts on, but one will have to come off so I can enlarge the hole.  Slight misalignment, and  fixable.

I just have to fix that and pop-rivet it in.   This side was easier to deal with because there wasn’t a trim relay board in the way, although I did have to cut down the aft part to clear a wiring conduit.

I really wish these had been included in the kit, and I’d installed them before I wired everything.   C’est la vie.  Wot’ ever.

 

Prop Safety Wired.

2.5 hours.

This is pretty much what I did last weekend.  I was only able to get up to the airport for a couple of hours, and in that time, I had to figure out how to safety-wire the prop.   This is a necessary step.  The propeller needs to stay on, and it needs to stay on for the entire duration of the flight.  The way this is accomplished is with the ubiquitous safety wire.   The Hartzell manual calls for .032 safety wire on these six bolts and fortunately I’ve got half a spool of it still in my kit.

I lost count of the number of runs I took at this, but finally I got it right.   There are a couple of interesting parts to this.  First thing is to get the prop torqued to 65 ft/lbs.   Then you have to back the nuts off enough to get the safety wire through the spring pin.  Then you have to guess the length of wire you need after all the twisting happens.   They’re supposed to be wired in pairs, with the wiring preventing the nuts from backing out and causing really bad things to happen, like the prop departing the airplane and leaving you with a not-so-gliding glider.

20130714-211007.jpg

As you can see from this next shot, I had a few attempts.   Apologies for the bad photos; as soon as you jam the iPhone up close to something in low light, its autofocus loses its mind.

20130714-211020.jpg

Another list of stuff to do.

  • Safety wire prop bolts, recheck torque
  • Finish mech fuel pump overflow line
  • Separate EGT/CHT wires, ignition wires, and alt air Bowden cable per Jim’s recommendation
  • Install pax crotch strap bracket
  • Resolve stick-to-quadrant interference – move sticks outward a bit or move quadrant
  • Relocate alt air cable pull to eliminate stick interference
  • Relocate cabin heat pull to eliminate stick interference
  • Label purge, cabin heat, alt air and audio input
  • Label Audio Input
  • Fix pitch trim travel
  • Connect pitot and AOA lines.
  • Verify ARINC connection from GNS430 to Odyssey EFIS.
  • Separate/anti-chafe cabin heat SCAT tubing.

And some other stuff:

  • Order Crow harnesses
  • Begin paperwork journey
  • re-up 3rd Class medical cert
  • get BFR
  • sort out tailwheel/aerobatic training
  • Get insurance
  • Find a DAR