I recently had the final inspection completed on my RV-10 and one of the snags surprised me. The inspector was looking at my beautiful Andair fuel caps and asked me whether they were ground bonded to the airframe. I didn’t know so we took a multi-meter and checked to see if there was an electrical connection between the Andair sleeve that gets bonded into the original fuel neck in Van’s wing tank and the wing skin. There wasn’t.
This meant that I had to come up with a way to electrically connect the original neck of the fuel tank and the sleeve that gets bonded in with tank sealant.
What I did to correct this was to drill a hole in the Skirt of the Andair sleeve big enough to allow a 6-32 machine screw to almost pass through. I then drilled a smaller hole through the skirt of the tank filler neck right behind it. I had to countersink the outer hole so that the screw head would not interfere with the fuel cap. There is not much clearance. I used a tap and carefully started the threads in the Andair sleeve. I then threaded the screw that had been sharpened somewhat through both sleeves.
All of this had to be done carefully in order to keep any contaminants out of the fuel tank. I accomplished this by taking strips of masking tape and looping them down into the tank fill opening and just leaving the area exposed where I drilled the hole. When I finished I vacuumed out the hole and checked inside for filings. Anything that landed on the empty tank bottom was removed with a stick that had tape affixed to it sticky side out.
I tested the new configuration for continuity and found that electricity flowed from the inner sleeve to the wing skin. For all of the thinking it took to come up with a workable fix, it took only 10 minutes to actually perform the work.
The interesting thing about this problem is that Andair knows about it but couldn’t offer any suggestions as to a fix. I hope that this helps anyone else who has these fuel caps.
What a refreshing change. It seems that all of the products that I have been reviewing lately in anticipation of flying my plane think that Canada is only 100 miles from North to South! It is frustrating to see all of these wonderful tools in the hands of the Americans and we are left in the cold up here with our whiz wheels!!
EH to GO Doug and Blake!! You have made one Canadian VERY Happy.
Recently, I completed the final inspection on my RV-10 and after fixing up a few snags ( I would have been VERY surprised if he didn’t find any problems) I now have permission to take her flying. We have named the plane Vera May after my grandmother and I have been able to get the registration marks C-GVMH which are her initials. I have a couple of issues to deal with before she takes flight though. I have a nagging radio problem that we have been trying to rectify. The SL-30 has been going into COMM failure after it warms up and it eventually will not change frequencies. It transmits and receives OK on the frequency it is on, it just stops allowing you to flip/flop after a while. No primary radio. No first flight. Simple as that! I have an avionics tech working with me on it.
I am SO happy that this 7 year build is coming to an end. I am looking forward to flying this thing and eventually sharing it with my VERY patient wife and children. So far, I have avoided AIDS (Aircraft Induced Divorce Syndrome) but my wife does want to see some utility out of the huge black money pit that sits in the hangar. You ALL know what I am talking about.
I was out at the airport on Saturday and had an opportunity to run the engine up close to max RPM. A friend of mine named Gary who owns an RV-7 was around and later told me how sweet the LS1 sounded. He said that he couldn’t hear the prop but rather the engine. Said that he looks forward to watching me do a ‘runway inspection’ so he can hear the engine in flight. I look forward to obliging him.
I had purchased a MT prop governor from Van’s a while back thinking that they are all the same. Well, they’re NOT! There are actually 4 variants of the prop governor as I have come to understand. Clockwise and counter-clockwise as well as pressure to go coarse and pressure to go fine. I had purchased a CW unit and I needed a CCW unit. (I think that is right) Anyway, I had a P-860-4 and I needed an P-850-4. I sent it into Hope Propeller in Mississauga Ontario and they converted it over to the opposite direction.
I mounted it on the gearbox and ran the engine up and whadda ya know!! It worked. It took a while to get the oil into the prop hub to move the piston but it eventually worked. Much to my better state of mind.
I am going to have another pilot do the first flight for me. I don’t have enough experience in higher performance aircraft to do the first flight. He has 12,000+ hours and tons of time behind high performance engines. He holds his current ATPL license so he can transition me into the cockpit after the first couple of flights.
Hope everyone had a good holiday and that they got lots of work done on their projects.
I am VERY happy to announce that the first run of Dial-2-Start Cellular Remote Switches are ready for sale.
For those who haven’t been following the development of this product, I have been developing a device that will control your engine pre-heater allowing you to start heating up your engine by simply calling the unit.
The unit plugs into any standard 110 volt socket and can supply 12 amps to any type of heater or other device you choose. It has 2 output circuits that have LED lights in the ends so you can tell if the unit is activated. The outputs can be set to turn on for a specific amount of time up to 18 hours and can be activated by a phone call or via SMS text message. When activated via SMS text message the unit will send you a confirmation text message saying that it has activated.
This device has been designed to replace cyclical timers which are not good for an engine. Turning on the pre-heater daily will result in condensation forming inside the engine. In time this results in rusting of wear surfaces and premature component failure.
It is best to pre-heat your engine and then fly the airplane. This will drive the moisture from the crank case. When you return the engine is allowed to cool to the surrounding temperature without undue moisture in the crank case.
Imagine being able to get up in the morning to a beautiful sky then calling your aircraft to prepare it for flight while you have your morning coffee. By the time you drive to the airport the engine is toasty warm and ready for flight. You open the hangar doors and are ready to fly!!
There will be winter cost savings in fuel simply because you do not have to wait for the engine to get up to the 100 deg. take off temperature. Burning AV gas is a very expensive way of getting your engine up to temperature. It is even more so when the temperatures are below 10 deg. C!!
I took the time and effort to develop this product the safe way as well. I have used ONLY tested and rated components. Others are using boards with unrated Chinese relays and such. I have put the unit through safety testing and it has obtained a c TUV us safety rating.
I am very happy with the units and have the available for sale at www.dial2start.com
Thanks for listening and I hope you have a tailwind!
I am building a Van’s RV-10 with a Chevrolet LS1 V8 engine in place of the Lycoming IO-540. My build has progressed along pretty much as planned but I did run into a bit of a problem when it came to wiring the firewall forward.
As many of you have seen under the hood of your automobile, there is a large mass of wires that originates at the engine computer module (ECM) that fan out to the various sensors and actuators throughout the engine compartment. As the engine I have chosen is of the same automotive origin, I have had to play in their sandbox so to speak when it comes to wiring harnesses.
I first started looking in to this issue when I received my engine computer and wiring harness from Geared Drives. They are a distributor of Painless Ignition Systems. These are the people who supplied my propeller speed reduction unit (PSRU). The trigger for me was in looking at the terminal ends that went into the ignition relay. I saw bright shiny copper!
I remembered then that the Tefzel wire that was used in the rest of the airplane had a silvery colour rather than a copper colour. This led me to do some more digging because I wanted to understand the issue fully. Up to this time I had followed the wire recommendations found in the assembly manual and AC 43.13 but I didn’t fully understand the reasons behind them.
Tefzel coated wire has 4 things going for it that standard PVC coated automotive wire doesn’t.
The extruded coating (ethylene/tetrafluorbethylene)on Tefzel wire has a much higher melting point as compared to PVC. 150 deg. C verses 75-85 deg. C. This is a significant difference!
Polyvinylchloride (PVC) is toxic when it burns which it does at a much lower temperature.
The wire used in the core of Tefzel is tinned throughout so it is much more resistant to corrosion than bare copper.
Lastly, the core wire has many more strands that are able withstand voltage up to 600v.
This led me to a decision I need to make regarding the safety of my aircraft. I sat down with Charlie Murray one day over coffee to discuss the issue. Neither of us had ever heard of an instance where the builder of an aircraft with an automotive conversion engine had replaced the wiring in the engine wiring harness with Tefzel. This said, he agreed with me that it would be proper to follow AC 43.13 and change it out. I decided at that time to convert to Tefzel wire.
The first step in the replacement process was to define a couple of firewall forward wiring standards relating to my LS1 installation.
1.The main wiring run from the front of the engine to the ECM has to be thermally protected as it comes in close proximity to the exhaust headers. This will be done using the same type of fire sleeve used on fuel lines.
2.As completely as possible, all wiring in the engine compartment will meet the MIL-Spec wiring standard.
Next, the supplied wiring harness needed to be documented so that its operation was understood and pin diagrams could be made. This process involved searching the internet for specific wiring diagrams and becoming intimate with the Delphi MEFI-4b ECM. All of this information was readily available. MSD was a great source of information as they manufacture a very similar harness and ECM combination. Their documentation was superb.
Each of the connectors incorporated into the engine wiring harness had to be identified along with the terminals within them. This was a very important exercise as there are 6 different types of terminal used in the harness. I ended up purchasing 4 types locally and had to order 2 from the U.S. I will list the terminals used, the manufacturer/distributor and part numbers at the end of the article.
The wire had to be researched as well. I needed to know the gauge of the wire used in the automotive application so that I could choose a comparable Tefzel product. Again I turned to the internet for this after counting the number of strands and determining their individual gauge. This information led me to the decision to use predominantly 18 Gauge wire throughout the harness. The only heavier wire used in the original harness was used to supply power to a number of sites all at once.
Having gathered all of this information and making a number of trips to Auto Parts Centre in Dorchester to compare terminals to the original I was able to order allnew components for the engine wiring harness. While waiting for the materials to arrive, I was able to get a good start on the fabrication of my magnetic alternate air door. More on that at a later date.
Embarking on this project was purely academic to this point. That all changed when I had to make the first cut of a harness wire! With paper and pen in hand I systematically cut and recorded the wire colour, position and terminal type. I did this one wire at a time. Each connector has identification numbers or letters on them so you know where the wire is supposed to return to. I got ahead of myself once. I cut the wires and pulled them out before recording their position in the connector. It took a frantic few minutes on the internet before I turned up a pin diagram for that specific sensor connector posted on an LS1 engine forum.
Here is where we get into the nitty-gritty of the job. After having separated the old terminal ends from the 2 ECU connectors and labeling the wire ends, I untangled the individual sections of the harness such as the injector connectors and the temperature sensors etc. and set them aside. I then took them individually and removed the terminal ends from the connector blocks. With this complete I cut new wire lengths from the 4 colours I had in stock. Red, White, Black and Yellow. All of this was recorded for future reference.
One of the other decisions I made early on in the project was that as many ground wires as possible would be run to a common grounding point. As such, I have installed a 48 tab grounding block on the cockpit side of the firewall and a 24 tab grounding block on the engine side if the firewall. The engine block is grounded to the large lug common to these two blocks which are back to back on the firewall. This allowed me to run separate grounds back to the ground block instead of merging them into a single wire as had been the practice in the original harness.
As I replaced sections of the harness I connected them to their corresponding sensors and such on the engine. This enabled me to run the wires very neatly along a common path back towards the ECM which is mounted on the firewall. I am looking for a very neat installation and will be tying the bundle with waxed cord when they are all in place to keep them from chaffing.
There are a number of wires that need to penetrate the firewall to be terminated in the cockpit. I have them running through a specially designed stainless steel flange that gets lined with fire sleeve (surrounding the wire bundle). A separate fire sleeve is then placed over the flange and is held in place with gear clamps. The end is sealed with high temperature silicon.
One of the groups of wires passing through the firewall leads to the OBD2 connector. This connector is very similar to the one in your car where a technician can connect to it while the engine is running. I fabricated a bracket to mount the connector where it can be easily accessed. I mounted it to the right side of the throttle quadrant just under the lower lip of the instrument panel.
The relay block that came with the harness has 3 relays. One for the ignition, one for the Air conditioner and one for the fuel pump. In my application the ignition relay is the only one of the three that I am using for its original purpose. The other two are going to be re-assigned to handle the switching of the dual coolant pumps. These will be controlled by the pilot via a switch on the panel.
Final assembly of the various wires into the Delphi main harness connectors is the last large job to be completed in this swap out. Each wire is stripped and hand crimped to the terminal after having been inserted through the hole at the proper location. Unmentioned before in the article, when talking about terminals was the fact that they have been soldered as well as mechanically crimped. Vibration can come into play over time and a bit of solder on the exposed end of the wire will go a long way towards keeping electrical gremlins at bay. Be sure though, to make sure that the soldered portion of the wire does not migrate too far. This could lead to the strain relief area becoming less flexible and a future failure.
The MDRA inspectors are aware of this wiring issue and have started to fail inspections as a result. I hope that I have been able to shed some light on a problem that I think has gone un-noticed in the past. We are all responsible for the safety of our amateur built aircraft. We need to consider the wiring used in every area of the aircraft and replace it with proper Tefzel coated MIL-Spec wire wherever necessary.
Here are a couple of photos of the harness and terminals.
We have made significant progress to date in the development of the cell switches.
I am happy to announce that the prototype unit is going to be submitted for product safety testing next week. This process will take from 4 to 6 weeks and will end with the issuance of a cTUVus rating. This process will give customers the assurance that this electrical appliance has been properly tested to meet IEEE standards and is ready for the market place.
I am happy to be offering this fully certified product to a market that has seen other offerings that look very similar. None of the other products that I have come across in my research have been put through the same level of testing and none of my competitors can give you the assurance of safety that I can.
We will be offering our cellular remote switch/alarm for US$ 349.00 and look forward to speaking with the many pilots out there who would like to open their hangar and jump into a toasty plane that is ready to take off. This device will save you money every time you use it. You can count on less engine wear upon start up, less fuel burnt waiting for temps to get into the green and even a warmer cabin where winter check list items can be focused on instead of rushed through.
Thanks for your patience. It will be well worth it. I will be posting some comments from my beta testers in an upcoming post.
I was parusing the wonderful Van’s Airforce site run by my friend Doug Reeves the other day and I came across a post by Bob Axsom. He is always looking to reduce drag on his airplane and came up with an interesting cover for the NACA intake on the side of his plane.
Using a piece of aluminum cut out to the shape of the NACA air intake opening he rivited another piece of aluminum to the wider end (aft) so that it would go in behind the skin of the aircraft. On the narrowend he dirlled and dimpled a hole for a flush screw. The screw extends through the plastic duct to a fastener behind.
Now, Bob did this for drag reduction reasons and I think that he has something going there. Where it really shines though is for us guys in the higher latitudes. We have the best of both worlds up here. Hot summers and freezing cold winters. To be able to completely shut off the vent at its source is way better, in my opinion than trying to put some sort of valve in line with the SCAT tubing.
Now, when you do your conversion to winter operations which is usually done at annual time you simply have to put these covers in place and install 2 screws. What could be easier.
Well the launch of this product sure has been an odyssey!
I have been working for about a year and a half in an effort to bring you a safe and reliable remote switch that you can remotely start the engine and cabin preheating process. The major stumbling block in this process has been in finding a reliable supplier of the control boards. I am happy to say that I have finally moved past this road block and that I have boards on their way to me.
The next step is one that one that I think is mandatory. Electrical compliance testing for operation and fire safety. This unit is going to be controlling electrical heaters and it needs to be the strongest link in the chain. There is a similar offering that has recently been announced by AeroTherm.
Their device uses a board similar to the one I initially began prototyping with. I found that the output relays on the board as supplied were only rated to CE compliance. This does not meet the IEEE safety requirements for North America that a UL, CSA or TUV rating would provide and does not require the rigorous safety testing that these other ratings ensure. I also know that the board that their unit is based on is being phased out and is currently no longer in production.
When I receive the new boards in a few days I will have an updated design that allows for a greater functionality. The new design will be able to read inputs as well as be able to direct outputs. It will also be able to be directed from your computer. I have yet to see the operating and set-up instructions so I will have to get back to you on that.
I appreciate your patience and that of all of the people who have contacted me regarding the availability of this product. If all runs smoothly with this new board I will have units available for sale by Christmas.
Had a conversation with Rogers/AT&T the other day. They are my local carrier here in Ontario, Canada. Basically, they were happy to have the units run on their system and they have a product that will allow you to run your unit for under $10 per month.
I am going to get one of their SIMs into our Beta units and start using it in our hangar on my partner’s RV-9A.
I am still waiting on my overseas partners to get their ducks aligned and send me some extension antennas and finalize the product specifications. Once this is done I can assemble some final production units that can be sent out for CSA/UL testing. The units will not be released to the public until they have received the certification.
This project has been plodding along at a pace that frustrates me somewhat. This is partly due to the difficulty in dealing with development partners overseas and the fact that i have a lot of irons in the fire right now.
One of the stumbling blocks with this system is the fact that the customer has to establish a relationship with a cellular carrier for this unit to work. In the beginning we were thinking that we would hold a corporate account with T-Mobile and the customer would simply logon to an account controlled by us to add minutes to their cards. This is a non starter for me simply due to the PITA factor.
I have been in conversation with Rogers/AT&T about setting something up where I supply the SIM card pack with the units as a distributor and the customer then activates the account to get the unit up and running. I should hear back from them within the week.
Once this is set up and I get some more units from overseas we can get them UL/CSA tested and released for sale.
