10/25/2023
After 90 hours, here is some notes:
1) the vacuum pad alternator was not a good primary alternator. it didn't charge after start an never really kept the battery charged on the ground. I was finding after a flight, during taxi back, the battery was discharging. Then the next morning, the battery was low when trying to crank a cold engine. as mentioned in a previous post, I switched to a small belt drive alternator. Same weight, but really good charging at low RPMs
2) The cowl inlet ramp on my right side was placed too far back. The right side of the Lycoming has the cylinders forward of the left side. The inlet ramp needs to be as far forward as possible so as much air as possible can get to the rear cylinders. I modified this after the Phase 1, but is still not great. At the 100 hour inspection (start of yearly conditional inspection) I will redo cowl inlet ramps and the two associated baffles to get even more air in back.
3) O2 was installed and works great. However, the O2 controller uses batteries to open and close the metering valves. On my first tank, the batteries died before I ran out of O2, so I found myself coming back during night cross country at 8500' without the benefit of O2. I am switching to aircraft power for the o2 metering controller.
4) I rarely fly at full speed. Seems the plane likes to fly at peak EGT to get terrific fuel economy and reasonably good speed.
Next phase is getting me and the plane reading for IFR flying.
