« Archives on July 15, 2013

Crotch Strap Bracket part 2.

July 15, 2013 / posted in Fuselage / No Comments

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.

July 15, 2013 / posted in Firewall Forward / No Comments

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.

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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.

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