Engine Work – Omnibus Edition

Here are a bunch of things that were done from a few days of working over the holiday period. We are now back to weekends only again.

The ignition circuit was finished by first wiring a ground wire to the metal shielding on the ignition wires.

and then putting the Molex connectors on the end of the wires and into the attachment for the mags.

I’d gotten the hang of the crimper for the wire part of the deal but not for the wire cover so we still did that using pliers. Much to my joy both connectors went into the assembly with a resounding click. And then the switch was put back in the panel and wired to the power bus.

The ignition switch requires a diode to be installed at the solenoid and so I spliced that in with the control line from the ignition.

I finally got a fitting for the tee into the gascolator for the fuel return line

As part of some tidy up we zip tied a lot more things out of the way in the engine area, and also safety tied the choke cable sheaths.

The only thing left now on the controls side of thing is to complete the pilot side throttle installation (missing the cable sheath, but I’m told bicycle brake line works) and to make sure both throttles hit the stops.

In preparation for engine start, we filled the reservoir with coolant

(this entry’s useless pic of the day)

and the propellor was put back on, including the spinner back plate this time.

The propellor must be balanced for the engine start so after watching a video and reading the instructions we were able to set our blades at 12.5 degrees (which I think is right).

Today we set out to purge the oil line by disconnecting the oil return line from the cooler and pulling the oil through with the propellor while pressuring the line with the compressor.

After a while we started to get drips of oil appearing at the end of the line but never did get a steady stream of oil like we were expecting. I think the line is purged but we can’t check on the oil pressure gauge as the battery died when we got to the hangar. I had no idea I had used it that much! And no I didn’t buy the charger when I bought the battery.

With that on hold we decided to test the fuel lines. Scott bravely volunteered to pour in the gasoline and we had a big leak right from the start right inside the wing. After tightening the fitting at the top of the fuselage we tried again and discovered another leak at the tee where I had put in the fuel sump. Bottom line seems to be that I’m not very good at making sure things are tight.

Making a long story short, we had some more issues getting gas all the way to the firewall but by the end of the day we think the line had cleared. With no battery we couldn’t try the fuel pump.

No time to check the pilot side but it is a safe bet that everything needs to be re-tightened, will do that first before pushing any more fuel into the system.

Up until today I was feeling pretty upbeat about things so today put a good downer on that, seemed to be some pretty basic faults in my work that I should have caught. I’m lucky that both Allen and Scott don’t mind getting stuck in and fixing my mess. Between power and fuel, things are getting real, and I’m maybe getting a bit scared at how serious it is getting.