Paint

That turned to be quite a disaster. I did get rid of lots of corrosion, but painting tubes hunched over, or using some other way to get to the point I tried to paint was abysmal. I will admit to trying to spray, making a hell of a mess, and giving up on that very quickly. I'd have to mask literally everything - the kind of paint they gave me floated and didn't dry up anywhere near quick enough to be reasonable.

Ended up removing a couple tubes (happened to have been ruder pedal connecting rods) that I could remove and painting them outside - that was pleasant, compared to the rest of the affair.

Didn't even take a single picture.

Closing Up

Well. First of, instead of using nutplates, everywhere where the back side was deemed reachable, Remo decided to just leave a hole and put a regular nut on the finish screw that was deemed accessible from the back. Lots, and lots, of grief.

Just wing intersection fairings took 3 evenings to put on.

Then, I discovered that fabric was torn around one of the inspection plates, and it's couple nutplates were missing. I basically had two large holes in fabric.

Pondered this a bit, and made up this little monstrosity:

Backer plate

The idea is that this thing goes on the back, and fabric gets sandwiched between it and the inspection plate. I had to use #6 screws, and the only nutplates I had were for sheet metal screws. Well, that just adds to ugliness. And no, I didn't have riveting equipment to properly rivet them on - but JB-Weld works just as well; and is only there to prevent plates turning under torque anyway.

Here it is, this monster "nutplate", peeking thru the hole in the fabric.

Peeking

Used 3M FireBlock to patch up all the holes in the firewall with gaps around them.

FireBlock

It's a fancy sealant, consistency of your usual RTV silicone. I shaped the "mounds" with my finger constantly wetted in mineral spirits - that prevented wet sealant from sticking to it, and allowed me to work it reasonably well.

More FireBlock

Safety wired the prop. Momentous occasion!!!

I suck at safetying. I shouldn't, but I completely suck at it :(

Many many attempts

Well, and then the rest of it. Plates, plates, plates. Oh, this guy made a home around one of my aileron hinges:

An un-invited guest made his house here

You do know stories of these guys bringing down large planes, yes?

... and more fairings, and more cussing about the nuts instead of nutplates.

But eventually, all of those were on, and the last thing left was...

Weight and Balance

This one was fun actually. Fun, and sketchy. Sketchy as ...

I had to raise the tail pretty high. Felt like about 4 feet high.

So it basically is a game of "ladders", with dynamics of Jenga blocks.

Up

You raise it as high as it'll go, stick something under the tail wheel, add an "extension" to the jack, raise it higher...

After the first "extension" on that car jack I quickly realized that was too sketchy, and switched to a bottle jack. That was a lot more uneventful, but went much slower (bottle jack has something like 10 inches extension, and needs a second "ladder" for itself as well).

Oh, all those boards are screwed together. It's not a high-stakes Jenga, after all :).

With bottle jack

Here's the final setup, on scales. Airplane level and with all the "flair" attached to it. Well, can you find the pieces not yet permanently attached; but at least in the right spots?

On scales

So how did we do?

I lost 11 pounds! Makes sense, too: with smaller and lighter alternator, much less (and much thinner - appropriate for amperage!), wires, removed mechanical engine instruments, etc etc etc. CG moved back just a hair, too: which indicates loss of weight closer to the front of the airplane. Again, makes sense!

"Georgetown Ground, Yellow FJ..."

And so, we were done. Anti-climactic, really. Felt that way at the very least. She was dry (had to be for weighing) - very conveniently, too, I managed to just burn off the last gas I had in her, so didn't need to drain anything. But I needed new gas - to, well, get gas - so that I had enough to taxi to the pumps.

Hmmm.

Called the tower, they were okay with the idea, so ahead I went.

Pulled up in my car to the movement area threshold with the gas can in the back.

"Georgetown Ground, Yellow FJ Cruiser, at Trinity, taxi to the pumps" "Yellow FJ, proceed on A-1" "Proceed on A-1, yellow FJ"

That was a first.

?!

That is not sketchy. No sir. Not at all. I decided to put gas in the wing tank, so that I would know exactly what my main tank capacity is - measured myself.

Came out to 26.1 gallons - with .1 non-useable that I drained, that was right on the mark.

And then, the next day, took Mr. M to the airport. We climbed in, donned our headsets on, taxied up to the pumps, filled her up, and went back and forth on the long taxiway a few times - so that I could remember my footwork and break in new brake linings , and he could just have some fun.

Felt good. Really good.

Upfront

Finish mounting the starter was no problem: clean up the threads, clean up the studs, torque, done. Then, the alternator.

Belt tensioning... too annoying by hand, but it took me a while to stop trying and become sensible.

Belt Tensioning

You gotta safety two bolts over there, and I decided to make it nice: for the bottom (pivot) bolt, drilled a tiny hole in the bracket lower than where the alternator would be, and for the top bolt attaching the bracket to the motor... hmmm...

Somewhere on VansAirforce someone used a cherry rivet as a "hookup" point for the safety wire. I thought to one-up that, and use a short #8 screw - drilling it's head.

Frankly, I didn't think it'd work out.

Drilled cap head

...but as you can see, it did.

So then, to the hole in the bracket. I needed a #8-32 tap.

Side, fun, story: quite a while ago I ended up bidding in a machine shop liquidation auction. Got quite a few nice things, including a very heavy duty bandsaw - and, accidentally, a massive cabinet full of tooling. Anything you could imagine: inserts, drills, taps, slitting saws, you name it. In all shapes and sizes. When we moved the cabinet, we emptied it into about 10 boxes, so ... I did have a #8-32 tap. In fact, probably about 20 of them. Question was, which one of the boxes were they in.

... apparently, in the one on the top. Hmm. This kind of luck is unusual.

Tap

Look at it carefully. Does it look like a regular tap we are all used to?

Didn't to me either.

So to researching we went.

Aha! "Threadforming" tap. AKA "Cold Rolling". So that's how they're done. Rolled threads are formed into the metal rather than cut; giving them superior strength. Basically, the tap shapes the metal, displacing it in the valleys and raising peaks.

Company that made these taps was advertising them for CNC milling. Well, what's a human if not a bio-CNC machine?!

Okay, problem number 2. I was pretty sure normal tap and drill chart values for hole diameters won't work; making too small a hole. Hmm...

The Bible

Aha! "Ideal Theoretical Hole", and closest drill available charts are just what's needed.

The Word

And with that, the affair was a non-event.

The Hole

Actually safetying was annoying - I had to try twice, because I had to use a hand-twister and you had to get the length just right.

Hand Twister

Safetied!

Airbox

That thing needed to be put back on, and carb final torqued with a new gasket. Cleaned it all up inside as much as I could, and had to cut a couple of special gaskets that I can't for the love of me figure out where to get (carb's base is different size from the top - and this is an "airframe" problem - read, "no standard part from Marvel or Lycoming I could find reasonably"). No problem. Used the same material Lycoming used for their gaskets, ordered from McMaster, and made me a couple.

Cutting gaskets

Where they go

Perceptive will see the "airflow straightener". Glenn had it on when he put on the Rotec TBI, and in the times of my research of TBIs, I have discovered that some folks claimed they helped on carbureted motors as well. Well, it definitely won't hurt - aside from my having to do two gaskets instead of one. No biggie.

Carb

One interesting thing that happened. I had to drain the carb bowl of all the preservative oil, and flush it, so I took off the plug, drained it, and started putting it back in. Plug's an NPT thread with torque listed by Lycoming in SSP-1776 at 144 inch pounds.

Hmmm.. I noticed it was going in way deeper than it was in before, and way "harder" than when I took it out.

Hmmm.. Well, it's Lycoming, they know what the hell they're talking about. So in it went, at 144 inch/lbs.

But this bugged me. I think some other day I pulled out the Marvel's manual. 25-30 inch/lbs?! WHAT?!

Back to Lycoming. 144. Marvel (the makers of the carb)? 25-30. Damn it. Forums? Nothing interesting.

I finally figured it out. In SSP-1776, in the table for special torques, Lycoming lists the plug to have 3/4 pipe threads. Mine were 1/8 NPT. Lycoming's torque for those is 40-44 inch/lbs. Still higher than Marvel, but much closer now.

So, I undid the plug, that cut a bit of the tapered thread "deeper", of course. And put it back in, with the right torque this time.

Other Stuff

And then, minor stuff here and there. Cleaned and prepped spark plugs. Put the exhaust back on. Tightened things that had to be tightened. Charged batteries. Tied up everything hanging loose. Gave the plane a good look all over.

We were ready for the final day. There were a number of things I needed two sets of hands for, and I had just the man lined up.

Day X - or, September 19, to be Precise.

My buddy Mr. N. agreed to help, and be my observer and fireman (just in case). Mr. M. was extremely inquisitive about how we're gonna be putting out a burning airplane, and I had to explain a number of times that the goal of an exercise of starting a motor that's been idle for a year is not to have it go ablaze, and having a fire watch nearby is a part of prudence, not expectations. He seemed to have been disappointed. I would be too, if I was 5.

So, on a nice Saturday, we went to the airport.

First, drained all the pickling oil. Took off the prop (because we'd have to spin the motor to pressurize the oil lines). Put the fuel pump back on. Tightened all new fuel lines, and leak checked them. Mr. M. used my fancy "button with alligator clips" to turn it on. Put new oil in, primed the oil cooler and pump (and this is fun in this airplane, because there's no oil filler neck on the motor). Checked control cable travel, and final cotter pinned them. Checked brakes again (though we bled them when I finished fixing them up).

Then, came the pressurization, and purging of oil lines, time. Mr. M insisted that he wants to "press the button" - which would put +12V onto the starter contactor; bypassing my normal starting circuit (latter would make the left mag hot, and I didn't want that).

I told him to press the button and hold it and not let go till I told him to.

Now, starters with a motor with removed spark plugs are fast, loud, and annoyingly sounding. Mr. M. pressed the button. Jumped a bit. Grimaced a bit. He clearly didn't expect it. I didn't see it, Nick told me afterwards - I was watching the oil line. I yelled "Stop" when I saw the oil come out, and looked at Mr. M - who, at that point, was shaking and at the point of breaking down in tears. But! He didn't let go of the damn button. Man.

Mr. M

And that was that. Plugs went in, and we were ready, but broke for lunch, first. Mr M deserved his hot dog.

... back from lunch. Plane out. Wheels chocked. Brakes tested. Fire watch ready and instructed.

Final prep

... damn, that old Concord battery removed from the Cheetah years ago is weak and barely pulling thru.

... second try: no primer, so I have to pump the throttle a bit.

... she's alive!!!!!

I let the temps go up just a bit, and called N. He confirmed everything seemed to have been fine. We shut down, and went over every fluid fitting. All good.

Started her back up - I wanted to warm the oil to a reasonable temp and let her circulate for a bit, maybe 30 minutes - to get the juice flowing again.

On the second run, I revved her harder, and smelled something. Smelled like... burnt wiring? N. went around the engine, all wires, and everything he could see or think was close to being to a hot surface, or an electrical doodad. No signs of trouble.

We decided to proceed.

She ran just fine. I think we ran for about a total of 30 minutes. Shut her down, dragged her in. Went over the wires again - all of them. Nothing, all clean. There were no bad indications on any of the electrical instrumentation, either. So at that time, we left that as a mystery to be solved.

... and with that, we went home. We were tired.

Wingtips

SkyBeacon and SkySensor were to replace the existing nav lights. Yes, I know, SkySensor is probably a gimmick. But what the hell.

Remo ran nav light wires in a -4 tubing along the front wing spar, using it as kind of a "conduit", exiting the wires around the wingtip, and just soldering them to the nav lights he used. Wires were ~3 ft too long, which is a fine "service whip", but they were just laying on top of the inside of the fabric of the wingtip. There are no access holes on the wingtip, so no way to get in to tie them up.

Oh well. We work with what we have.

I was going to shorten the wires, and because the lights are on the top wing, I didn't want to solder them - I'd be doing it off of a ladder, very near if not on the wing's fabric... lots of things to go wrong.

The other thing I didn't want to happen was to have the connection points between the light's wire pigtails and wires in the wings to "rattle around" the wingtip (with no way of tying them down).

So I had this brilliant idea. The pic is post-realizing the idea was a mistake, with HST cut off....

SkySensor, and cut off HST

The lights had this plastic tube coming out thru which the wires were routed. I would shorten the pigtails as much as I could (like on the picture basically), hook'em up to the wing wires with barrel crimps, and put a long piece of my favorite glue-lined SCL tubing over them - with it glueing itself to the plastic tube and to the wires, creating one rigid "tube" coming off of the light...

Boy was that a mistake.

The tubing glued itself to the wires alright - but not to the plastic tube. So the whole thing created a rattly "lever" that would pull the wires thru that tube when vibrated - loading the soldered joints on the PCB of the SkySensor.

Not Good At All.

So that idea had to go to trash, and I had to cut the heatshrink off, carefully, with all the glue, without damaging the wires...

And ended up having to do exactly what I was trying to avoid - having rattling connections between the wing wires and the light, and to solder them. Why solder? Well, because the barrel crimps are heavy, relatively speaking, and I didn't want those heavy "bumps" bouncing around inside the wingtip, even with HST around them.

So, solder.

From the ladder, on top of the wing, covered in fabric.

Soldering setup

You can see the heating station on top of the ladder, and the light ready on some layer of paper towels on top of the wings.

As usual, I used the Nuckolls Splice.

Prepped for soldering

All soldered

HST, and ties

The other side got the same treatment, and...

Let there be light!

The other fun part? On the left side, Remo had standard 6-32 tapped holes in whatever the backing of the light socket for the navlight was made out of. I couldn't really see - maybe a nutplate, maybe just tapped sheet metal.

But on the right side, he used sheet metal screws. Which, of course, I didn't know about till I started putting the lights on - because I took apart the left side when checking if SkyBeacon will fit, and assumed the other side would be exactly the same. As usual, rookie mistake. By now, I should know to check everything.

Well, that was a minor delay. Spruce / AN standard doesn't have screws with the right size head (#6 AN screws have heads too large to fit on the SkyBeacon and SkySensor), so McMaster-Carr had to be resorted to to get the right size and length sheet metal screws.

P-Leads

The Charger has the Bendix mags, and the P-lead connectors on those are not ring-terminated; instead, using a "screw in" type deal.

Bendix type p-lead connector - old wire

Basically, the shielded wire goes thru the outer bushing. The ferrule is a "T"-shaped sleeve, and shield get spread out over the "shank" of the T. It's squished between the outer bushing's base and the "flat" of the T of the inner ferrule.

The center wire goes thru an insulating spacer (that brown piece), and thru a washer on the other end - with a "button" of solder built on top of the washer to create a contact point.

The whole contraption gets screwed into the mag's receiving hole with the nut - ferrule rests against the mag's casing, pushing on the insulator and the solder button to contact the contact point inside the mag, while the nut pushes on the outer bushing and clamps the shield between it's base and the inner ferrule.

Now, that works with something like 16GA wire, and it's too big with my small 20GA P-leads. Also, notice how beat up the shield on that setup is? That's the old P-lead.

Folks make adapters for these to go to ring terminals, but they run something like $100 per, which is just silly, so I was determined to make this work.

Here was my idea, and what it looked like on the right mag. Note two P-lead wires - one of them goes to the front cockpit's tach.

We pigtail the shield.

Shield pigtail

That gets heatshrunk - and the diameter is just right to go thru the ID of the ferrule.

First layer of heatshrink, thru the ferrule

Then, the second layer of heatshrink goes over the ferrule, "sandwiching" it between the two layers of HST.

Second layer of heatshrink

And with that, the bushing would slide over the outer heatshrink... but wait. Not so fast! The hole in the bushing's too small, maybe just by .010 too small, to fit over that layer.

Damn.

After playing with various heatshrinks for the outer layer, and trying to slide the bushing on while the HST was hot, I gave up, and...

... just enlarged the hole in the bushing. Yes, I know. The bushing seems to be CAD plated, and I surely took it off (the bushing was magnetic). We'll see how it fares - if I see rust, I can always buy the adapters for silly prices.

Bushing over ferrule covered in HST

And the rest is easy - fish the center wire (well, wires in this case, but same deal) thru the insulator, washer, and put the solder button on. Except that this is FWF ... hmm...

Soldering setup

Another exterme soldering setup? Well, not as much as the wingtips were...

Solder button on and cooling off

All done

And, screw the whole deal in.

P-lead attached to the mag

FWF, finishing up

And then, the rest of FWF. The only other interesting tidbit was my thinking about the Starter Warning light wire. It's one that goes off of the "I" terminal of the starter contactor - which goes "hot" when the starter contactor closes - to indicate "starter engaged" with a light. The whole shebang is probably superficial, but I convinced myself that I wanted it if for nothing else than to maintain "symmetry" of lights on my panel.

Silly.

Anyway, that wire needed a fuse - though it's an intermittent wire, and I'll admit to thinking about maybe not having a fuse on it, decided to do it, because it wouldn't harm a thing.

Used a 1A "legged" type PCB mount fuse there.

Inline fuse for the "starter warn" wire

The rest of FWF was nothing interesting to write about... Contactors, fuel pump, monitor harness, and the like. Tons of knots.

Got rid of all the remaining zipties and plastic "coils" around the ignition wires, too.

FWF - right side

Right side - engine monitor harness

FWF - left side

Left side - ignition harness, and battery wires

Underside - starter, and alternator wires

Prep

Couple things to knock off before I started wiring was to complete the back panel. One thing that was left was the compass correction card bracket. No problem, drilled and tapped a couple holes for #2 brass screws.

Here's Mr. M. installing it:

Compass Correction Card Bracket

The other one was the inertia switch for the smoke system. Glenn had it in for "safety": in the event of a shock (crash?) the switch breaks the circuit. I am.. not sure why he would have it, but he had it.

I considered not putting it back in, but what the hell.

Here's the switch:

Shock switch

The problem was, it sat tightly between other switches in the panel. With old layout, that barely worked; but with the new layout, and Honeywell double throw switches, the connector plug was getting in the way. So I had to resort to some vandalism. :)

Removed the connector and the shroud

Epoxy around the tabs

Solder!

And the switch fit nicely. Here it is, tucked between the switches. You can see how that connector would've interfered.

Shock Switch between other switches

The final prep thing was enlarging two holes for ground points to #10 and cleaning the back side up to expose nice shiny aluminum.

Panel

Now ready, I decided to install the switches first, and then wire them from the back. I needed a couple short jumpers though to connect them, and to set up some wires to be the exact length. That'd be impossible with switches installed in the panel (too little access), so I set up an old placard plate, installed switches into it, and worked on those jumpers and terminations on the bench before moving them to the airplane.

Switches on the bench mockup

Here's a couple more pictures of soldering and terminating fun pics:

Warning light socket

(that flux got cleaned off, of course).

Tagged and shrunk

The heatshrink I'm using for these and in fact all my soldered joints is special strain relief kind with glue in it, specifically, Raychem SCL. It's 3:1 and it is very rigid - almost completely rigid. It definitely adds more support than the typical PIDG crimp used everywhere.

Pigtailing shielded p-lead

Finished with rings, HST, and tag

And then, switches went in, got tightened and straightened up, and I started running the wires.

Somewhere in the middle of running the wires

I think it happened when I was yet again sitting in the cockpit, clicking the switches and enjoying the very well done Honeywell's action.....

Engine starter engaged position - note that I can hit the starter and hold the throttle with the same hand

...when it dawned on me...

My three most important switches, L and R Mags, and Master, were set up with lockouts - you couldn't turn them on just by clicking them, instead, having to pull the lever first to move it to the "on" position. I mostly did that to protect from accidental too playful a kid in the cockpit.

But they weren't locked out in the "on" position!

Why is that important? Well, the Smoke and the Fuel Pump - the most operated switches on this plane - are right there. Note how their levers are shorter? If I accidentally hit the longer levered Master, or a Mag, switch, that would turn it off - with me potentially shutting down the motor. While a remote possibility, improving the situation would amount to just replacing the switches to the ones with lockouts in both on and off positions.

I don't know how I missed that when designing the original setup...

I decided to do it.

So out came the switches, I had to un-wire the terminals from the back. In went the order for three new switches with now correct lock-outs.

About a week later, I had them, and could proceed.

With left side wired up, I could tie it down. Mind you, access there is tight and from all kinds of weird angles :).

Tying left side

Some of those knots I did from the side. Some I did while sitting in the cockpit, using mirror as reference

Look in the mirror!

Then, some "extreme soldering" to extend the panel lighting wires, that turned out to be a hair too short.

Extreme Soldering

For those lighting wires, and for the turn coordinator, routing took some fiddling with. My initial plan would've had them rubbing against the sides of the gauges, and I decided to bring them "out" and away - that's why I had to extend them, by the way.

Lighting, and turn coordinator wires, test-tied

Note no padding on that pitot line: this is a temp, "sizing" pass: I am yet to finish assemble the back panel, and will add the right padding then.

The right side of the panel was much easier - it held much smaller, and simpler circuits, for lights and turn and bank.

Right side

You can see the beginnings of the ground strap to bond the panel with the "side conduit", holding the fuse blocks and being one of the grounding points. In my original design, I had firewall, motor, "side conduit", and panel, as ground points - all bonded with those straps.

Here's the right side:

Right side

and the bonding strap

Panel bonding strap

(the bonding strap got enclosed in super flexible heatshrink just for neatness: this is a fit-up picture).

I also had some fun with ADELs right where the wires turn from the "side conduit" towards the panel. I had to clear and negotiate a couple bowdens, and the engine monitor harness was unwieldy.

I think that took a number of hours, just trying various setups, the final one that I really liked was this:

Engine monitor and carb heat bowden.

I replaced all the ugly zipties with lacing, of course :).

Meanwhile, on the outside, to keep the wires nicely separated, I spread them out in kind of a "fan" in the order they ran, back to front:

Wire fan

A day later, I replaced the tape with a comb. Yep, a cheapo $1 comb :) Worked out great.

And finally, before committing and continuing, I checked each wire for gauge, and proper circuitry.

Side Contuit, Part I

With all those wires sticking out, it was now time to start figuring out routing in the side conduit. All the wires that had to go forward had, well, to go forward.

After lots of fiddling, I ended up with this:

Initial stab at the side conduit routing

I had to clear all the brackets, and other sharp things. Ended up adding a couple more ADELs (and drilling holes in the conduit to accommodate). Also, reused some existing holes, made a few standoffs for ADELs and such.

Another angle on the side conduit

And that was it for now. Now, all the other wires needed to join the main harness in the side conduit.

Front Panel

The most interesting piece in it was a Westach tach, that fed directly off of a P-Lead and required a .25A fuse. Glenn used a 1A classic glass fuse, but I decided to do it right. See, the thing is, if it fails "short circuit", that'd turn off the mag - I guess that's why the fuse is in there.

The tach would get another 20GA shielded wire, just like a p-lead, and I decided to join it to right mag's p-lead at the magneto - instead of splicing it into the p-lead running front to back in the side conduit.

But, back to the fuse. I figured, I'd build it into my connector that hooks up to the tach. Then, if blown, the connector could be rebuilt. Yep, it's more annoying than a regular replaceable fuse, but that circuit is not critical, and I had no room for a "regular" fuse block or holder.

So I got me a "legged" .25A fuse with a massive voltage rating (I forget what it was, but definitely above what a mag makes), and hooked it to a regular Molex pin.

Inline fuse

Finished with SCL, it's encased in a plastic tube and is not moving anywhere. There's two layers there, actually: one around the fuse and the pin, and another around the housing and the inner layer.

All finished

The final connector got set up like this:

Inline fuse and connector

... and it goes on the tach like this:

On the tach

The lead is just a regular pigtailed P-lead, of course. Notice how I like using SCL around individual Molex pins for added strain relief - that's because I can't produce good Molex crimps that I like; and I end up post-soldering them in addition to crimping. That strain relief ensures that soldered joint is firmly held immobile. Takes a bit of extra time, but I actually like that better than straight Molex crimps.

The rest of the front panel wasn't interesting, just annoying. There's only three circuits there: nav lights wires from the left wing run along the back of the panel to the right side where the conduit is, and then there's hobbs and tach, and that's it. It was just very annoying: with very little access, not being able to see things, and, being in the front hole, having to climb out and in every time I needed a tool I forgot to put close (when in the back hole, I can roll up a cart to it and have all my tools there).

Mirror was absolutely required.

The only way to see things

I will admit to asking my dentist right around this time if he had a trick up his sleeve for this kind of mirror work. Of course, he said. Practice. Lots and lots of it.

Okay, so the front panel got done, and it's wires merged with the main harness.

Front panel sub-harness joining the main

There, see, it's that small bundle going up and disappearing from view right in the middle of the "conduit"? That's the front panel sub-bundle.

Firewall Forward

The final set of wires to join the main harness were all the wires coming from the firewall side - mainly, transducers and other instrumentation wires, but also a couple wires for the voltage regulator.

This was precisely when I realized the mistake I talked about in the beginning - and ended up with less neat, and more tortured harness. Oh well.

I started up front, trimming and terminating my fat wires for the starter and alternator B-feed. Some more extreme soldering (to cap them), this time with a torch.

More extreme soldering

I tied up, and clamped the fat bundle to the motor: and apparently, didn't take a single picture.

Then, I had to figure out the diode for the Starter contactor - first of, it needed longer leads. There, instead of soldering, I used small barrel crimps from Molex along with heatshrink (I do use them where soldering is impractical, and I decided not to have soldered joints FWF).

Diode with leads

And all enclosed

And then, a simple ADEL to hook it up and hold it

Diode all hooked up

And then, the ammeter shunt, and the sense wires. Those needed fuselinks - in liew of an in-line fuse. Simpler, and cleaner this way.

I tested them a while back, and am confident they'll work.

First, we take a wire 4 "gauge steps" thinner than the fused one (so 24GA for 20GA fused, etc). That goes into the "source" terminal.

Beginning of the fuselink

Then, we hook it up.

Hooked up to the protected wire

Then, some heatshrink over the splice, for strain relief.

HST

Then, a bit of fiberglass sleeve to contain the "fire" when (and if) it does it's job, as in, burns thru the thinner wire that acts as a fuse in case of a short.

A bit of marking too. And a "cap"

Capped and labeled

And finally, a couple knots to hold the sleeve better.

And laced

And finally, I finish installed all the engine transducers: pressures, and oil temp; and routed all their wires back into the side conduit and thru it back to the cockpit, adding them to the main harness. And that was that, for now - I plan to terminate them later.

Tail Light

I got rid of the belly strobe on the plane, because it was too heavy and too.. useless. Wingtip lights are gonna be the SkyBeacon and SkySensor from uAvionix (my ADSB mandate compliance :) ), and they have strobes: but they're not visible from the back. So I decided to replace the tail nav light with an LED nav/strobe.

Problem number one: no ground wire going to the tail light. For whatever reason, Remo decided to basically use the fact that the tail light is hooked up to the rudder with a pair of screws thru sheet metal of the rear rudder bow... I don't even want to begin to think what the ground path would be: hinges? control cables?

So, I needed a second wire.

Problem number two: it had to be one neat cable, and it had to be of a smallish diameter (Remo had an old 20GA wire, which is thicker than modern 20GA tefzel wire).

I decided to use a chunk of 20GA shielded - same ones I used for p-leads. Technically I guess you're not supposed to do that, but it's very far from all the antennas and I'm crossing my fingers that it won't create too much problems. Thickness was spot on.

So, I soldered the new piece to the old wire, and fished it thru using old wire as a pull. That part was scary - if that didn't work, I would've had to cut holes in the rudder to get a new wire thru.

Fishing a new wire thru

The tail light shipped with a small Molex. Why not?

Connector terminated

The other end went onto the light, and everything got hooked up

All hooked up!

On the other end (on the tail fin side) the wire went into a hole on the inspection cover, and had to join the wire coming from the front. And I had to have the ground there. You can see that area right behind the elevator on the "fishing wire thru" picture.

Problem number three: nothing to hook up the ground to in that area. The only option I figured out was to use one of the rivnuts that are attached to the tabs welded to the frame, hoping that there's no corrosion there between the aluminum rivnut and steel fuselage. I figured I'd use a way too long a screw thru one of the rivnuts when attaching that inspection cover, and then pull the ring terminal onto it, and secure it against the back side of the rivnut with a nut and a washer. Ugly? Yes; but I didn't have any more options. Really, the right way to do that would be to run two wires from the pilot panel all the way back, but.. I'd have to start cutting fabric for that.

So, I attached the positive to the wire that was already there, terminated my ground, hooked everything up, hooked up some power, and...

Nothing.

A bit of debugging showed that... ground was the problem. Damn! I picked the wrong rivnut, I guess - it had corrosion. The one right on the other side though showed the right voltage when measured against the positive lead, so I just moved everything to the other side, and...

Let there be light!

Intermission

Happy Birthday, America!

Happy Birthday, USA!

Side Conduit, Part II

At this point, the main harness looked something like this:

Main harness: complete, but not terminated

Now was the time to go thru it, cockpit to firewall, and terminate all the fuseblocks, and tie and zip everything up.

First, conduit, cockpit side. Lots of crossing things, lots of padding for bowdens where they cross the wires (I used the right sized vinyl tubing from my local friendly Aerospace Depot, and lacing to tie it).

Engine monitor harness got covered in tube for quite a distance - there was no way to keep it off and not rubbing on the conduit.

Cockpid side conduit

Fuse blocks got their placards. No, Mr. D., I am not doing brass placards again!

Fuse block covers placards

And then, slowly, methodically, every power wire got it's ring terminal. I added a bit of a "service loop" and used a ruler to try to keep each next wire exactly the necessary amount longer to reach the next terminal screw... Didn't work out too well, but close enough.

Rings!

Tied up and hooked up

Another side got the same treatment, and then...

?!?!?!

Did I just strip a terminal block hole?? Yep. I did. I blamed a bad block and definitely, positively, absolutely not my overtorquing the screw. Nope. No overtorquing. For sure!

So, had to get a new block. They're $35 so I figured I won't try to repair this hole to use an upsized screw....I'd spend more money on shipping small-headed #10 screws (the screws in the terminals are #8 but with small "oval" rather than "pan" aviation style head, so I'd have to get me some decent screws from McMaster.. by the time I'd be done, it'd be close to those $35).

So, fuseblocks. From there, it was just turning everything pretty.

Both fuseblocks done and tied

Mid section

Voltage regulator

The whole thing

Sorry, couldn't resist doing a "before" picture.

Before

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