Before fitting the spinner I wanted to have the prop temporarily mounted on the engine. This took a bit of work that happened in parallel with a lot of other tasks. Here are some pics, with words to follow later.
Taking a breather
Finishing up the exhaust
Tearing a new orifice
More to follow on this one, but as a teaser, things didn’t go so well after this picture was taken…
Racking and stacking
Getting a little frustrated with tweaking engine stuff, so in preparation for permanently installing the subpanel I started working on fitting the avionics racks.
The GMC-307 autopilot controller was easy.
Wasn’t so easy to get a correctly-aligned hole in the subpanel to accommodate the GTN-650 rack (the comm/WAAS GPS/VOR/localizer/ILS does-everything box).
Also had to make sure the GTN-650 and GMA-245 (that’s the audio panel) racks were correctly spaced from each other.
Took a lot of filing and fitting to get to this point. The rear rack mount “ears” are actually riveted to two 0.063″ angles that will be held in place by nutplates. I would’ve preferred just to attach them to the front side of the subpanel, but the rack attachment fasteners are too close to the subpanel to allow that.
A nice bit of visual progress, don’t you think?
I have no clever title for this throttle bracket post
…so you’ll just have to deal with the plain, unvarnished facts.
Two steps forward, one step back
Test-fitting the exhaust.
Problems with primary exhaust flange fit
Swapping out fuel injector servo mounting studs.
Fuel injection servo installed, intake masked off to keep stuff out.
Mounting the engine controls, starting with the mixture bellcrank.
The last really big check
…I hope.
I wrote it to Tim Hass and the folks at Approach Fast Stack for a Garmin 10.3″ G3X Touch EFIS system with Sirius XM, GTN-650 GPS/Nav/Comm, GTX-45R ADS-B In/Out transponder, GMA-245 audio panel, GMC-307 autopilot mode controller, two GSU-28 autopilot servos, and all the associated Garmin boxes that go into a G3X installation.
All these gadgets will be connected to one of Tim’s Fast Stack Pro-X hubs, which will make wiring significantly easier and neater.
It’s worth the (relatively) few extra dollars to speed up avionics installation, and the resulting product will be a lot easier to upgrade should I ever want to.
Two really expensive boxes…
…and their contents.
Doubling up
So why all the screws?
An alternative project
Had a few minutes to spare, so why not install the alternator?
The tensioner arm and pivot bolt still need to be torqued, but that’ll wait until the prop is on and the alternator belt is correctly tensioned.