First up today was finding the center line and center point of the cowl spiner fairing. I made a template and used a back light to help position it carefully. The top half seems very close to a circlular arc, the lower not bad but some variation.
I then moved onto the oil door for most of the rest of the day. Careful layout and plex-glass cutting wheel worked well for the initial hole.
Then it was a slow careful file / sand / shape. The hole is covered when the oil flap is down, but our hands will have to go through it for putting the cowl on and off - so getting it smooth and deburred is time well spent!
The top hinge is cleco'd in place. I may end up using screws / nutplates to hold the cowl side of the hinge in place. This will provide the chance to replace / repair the oil door if it gets damaged. I've seen several aircraft with this problem and it seems to be simple insurance.
The rest of the day was spent relieving the sides. The cowl material is quite thin but I think I've got it to fit. One thing that caught me out was the door has extra material in some areas which needed to be removed. At this point I haven't sorted the shims to lower the hinge yet.
Dad spent most of the day looking at the firewall and the various locations of parts.
First up was the fuel pump fittings, normal sort of deal - EZ-turn and torquing.
Then after lots of thought and measuring the fuel bulkhead fitting was drilled. We managed to get it just within the carb fuel pump facet that was installed as part of the quickbuild fuselage. Hopefully this will work well.
The remaining time was spent working on the FADEC harness again. The summary is the default harness doesn't fit! The two areas that seem to be a major problem are:
The spider fuel distribution has two pressure sensors - however the two sensor cables (seen bottom center) are only long enough to go to the rear most sensor. The front one is about 8" short of what is needed.
The second problem is the manifold air pressure. Originally I hoped that by turning the throttle control by 90 degrees would help with the harness problems, however the bowden cable routing doesn't work and the sensors cabling would end up rubbing against the exhuasts.
however with the inlet the 'right way round' the cables aren't long enough to reach the forward pressure sensor.
I'll talk to Mattituck and see if they have have suggestions - primarilly thought - if you want to order a FADEC solution, you might want to get longer leads for the fuel and MAP pressure and temp sensors. Hopefully I'll be able to give more specific recommendations later.
