Sunday, January 17, 2021

Firewall and Engine Prep

 Great progress these past few months. It seems as one gets closer to being done, many more decision need to be made by oneself. The plans become "a guide" and not instructions carved in stone.

For the engine, it seems there are two oil configuration choices for fixed pitch prop. The difference for a fixed pitch is the oil that normal goes to the prop needs to go somewhere and not build up pressure in the forward part of the crank. There seems to be two ways to do this when using fixed pitch. First is to use the normal oil return to the governor  by letting the oil return through the governor cover that has a milled slot. This is shown in the picture of my cover plate. The second way is to open up the front crank plug, punch a hole in the rear crank plug, and then reinstall the front crank plug. Then one could remove the governor line from the front to the back and plug the fitting holes in the case. Since I had the governor line in place and the front crankshaft plug already factory installed, I just verified the rear governor cover had the milled slot and than put everything back together as shipped from factory. This way a future conversion to a constant speed prop will be easy. I also installed the alternator on the vac pump pad and checked the torque on the fittings that were factory installed. I still need to put the oil and fuel fittings onto the accessory case.

For the firewall, most of the electrical stuff that attaches to the firewall is installed. I still have to assembly the wires with lugs and stuff. Here is how I did the current shunt and the ANL fuses. I have everything with 12V power on fusible links or ANL fuses before passing thru the firewall. I am using a single shunt set up to read battery charge and discharge current. This will tell me if the alternator is putting out sufficient current to have extra to charge the battery or if my load is too great and discharging the battery. Please note the copper bus bars are not straight. This was done to allow some expansion and contraction so as not to pull or push on the contactor  terminals.  Moving forward (Pun Intended)