4 hours.
I took a drive down to Earl’s on Hawthorne at the 405 freeway to pick up the fittings I need to plumb the purge line. I wanted to save the 11 bucks for shipping, which is ricockulous considering it’s all of 15 miles away from my house. I’m glad I went. The place is an absolute gold mine of high performance vehicle plumbing. They have everything, including the weird stuff, and best of all, they can custom-make hoses while you wait. Still a pricey run. The stainless steel bulkhead elbow for the firewall was not cheap by any stretch. After I got back, I pulled the wings out of the garage to finish up all the old business, which was fabbing conduit support angles, installing Adel clamps, fitting and plugging in the pitot tube, and wiring the autopilot roll servo. I also spent a good amount of time rubbing off old masking tape glue with MEK. Don’t leave masking tape on anything for too long, especially in a hot, dry place The tape turns brittle and the glue turns solid. On the right wing I got wise and heated up the old tape with a heat gun which let me get most of it off in one piece. The rest came off like the stickers Van’s still puts on every part, which never peel off cleanly. This process took a while and by then I was completely beat. I only got 4 hours of sleep last night for some reason, so I was a zombie all day. I figured I’d nap for an hour and go back too it, but I started reading the last chapter of William Gibson’s “Zero History” and I was asleep before the end of the first page. I woke up two hours later, still exhausted, but I went back out there and wired up the autopilot pitch servo.
Both autopilots got wired using the D-Sub method: Use barrel-crimp d-sub pins and sockets on the wires, then individually shrink-wrap them, then put a big shrink tube around all of them. I did this for a couple of reasons. First, the Molex connectors didn’t have a decent locking mechanism. I’m sure it’s fine, but I didn’t like it. Second, I somehow lost a couple of the pins. Embarrassing, but whatever, this should work fine.
I didn’t get around to plumbing my purge line, and common wisdom seems to be to wait until the engine is hung for this. But the longer I wait, the more stuff is going to be in my way when I do a triple-bypass on the fuel system, so I want to get the tubing roughed in as much as possible.
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