The rib stitching process started today. Jeff came over and helped with measuring and hole punching. I then spent the evening rib stitching the flaps. Since the fingers still work, the ailerons are probably on the agenda for tomorrow.
Yesterday, I painted the autopilot panel and the blank panel where the autopilot used to sit and today I painted the back of the label plexiglass for the light switched. The paint isn’t quite dry on the plexiglass yet, but everything else is reinstalled.
The flaps and ailerons are both heat shrunk and polybrushed. The ailerons were pretty straight-forward, since they’re relatively squared off. The flaps, on the other hand, have a bend on the inside edge that took some effort to get to work correctly. The ribs are thin enough that getting the glue to stick through the first round of shrinking was difficult. Next up, rib stitching.
The covering of the flaps and ailerons began this week. With some help from Jeff, we got the fabric rough cut and the ailerons covered. After the first round of shrinking, both look in pretty good shape. The small iron I bought from Spruce has trouble maintaing 350 F, so I needed to borrow Jeff’s iron to do the second and third round of shrinking. I covered the left flap this afternoon and did the first round of shrinking. It all looks pretty good, although the glue on the first inboard rib (which is slightly convex compared to the butt rib and the second rib) released, so stitching is going to be a bit more work.
Next up for the ailerons is two more rounds of heat shrinking and cleanup, followed by brushing with poly-brush, then rib stitching. Because of the convex rib, the first two inboard ribs will get stitched after the 250 shrinking, then everything will get brushed and stitched. Then both get finishing tapes to cover the corners and stitches, followed by two spray coats of poly-brush, two spray coats of poly-spray (silver), then two spray coats of poly-tone (color). Since there’s a 12 hour dry time between each of those coats, I’ve got a number of busy weekends.
After a bit of fighting, I got all the cylinder head temperature probes installed yesterday. The threads on the #3 cylinder needed a bit of brushing before the probe would start. The first two threads of the #2 cylinder, on the other hand, were so mangled that some careful work with a tap before the CHT probe would thread. With some help from Jeff, the exhaust gas temperature probes went in this afternoon. It took a bit longer to get all the wires secured than it did to get the EGT probes installed. With that, the only things remaining for the EDM install are securing some excess wire behind the firewall and installing the fuel flow meter.
Last night I sprayed the gray on the cover plate behind the EDM and the reducing plate for the clock. The gray is close, but not quite a perfect match. I’m not going to worry about the mismatch this year, but next year I’ll spray the panel a matching gray. I don’t want to spray in the plane with instruments installed and the pitot/static check isn’t due until next year. If I open the static system to remove the airspeed, altimeter, or vertical speed indicators, I’d have to do the pitot/static check this year, which is expensive. I didn’t paint the panel the autopilot is mounted in because I’m going to rebuild that to be a bit more secure.
The hardware for the flaps and ailerons is all painted and mounted again, so it’s time to start focusing on the recover.
Many of the labels that needed replacement since we bought the airplane were Avery removable white ink jet labels, which means that they were black text on a white background, generally on a black surface. In other words, they looked a little ugly. I had a bunch of gift certificates on Amazon, so a label maker with white on clear labels was procured. The white labels are gone, replaced with white on clear, which looks much better.
The Molex edge connector pins arrived, so the autopilot / nav radio connections are all wired up and the INS Nav is installed again. All that remains behind the panel before the annual is replacing the vacuum filter and building a cover for the big whole on the right, so it’s time to turn attention to the flaps and ailerons. Progress on that front was restarted today with the painting of the control surface attach points.
Started spraying the color coat on the mounting hardware for the flaps and ailerons tonight so that they’ll be ready for the weekend, should finish tomorrow. In between coats, secured all the interior wiring that got moved around during the EDM install and the circuit breaker panel rewire. Everything seemed to end up in the right place, so that’s good. Still have to remove some panels and paint, but since I’m still not sure whether I’m going to redo the panel for the autopilot, I’m going to hold off on paint a little longer. The panel on the left side of the footwell had carpet that was falling apart but the left had no carpet and was repainted a couple years ago. Since the carpet was falling apart, I decided to strip it down and just have painted aluminum. The carpet came off pretty easy and I’ve almost got the sidepanel cleaned up enough to paint, but still have some work to do.
I did manage to find time to get the Downer decals installed on the yokes. I’m really happy with how those turned out…
The pins for hooking the autopilot up to the Narco Nav/Com should arrive Friday, so I should be able to wire that up and install the VAL Nav again and basically be done with the wiring. The new panel for the lights arrived but needs a couple of holes drilled, so that will have to wait until the weekend (I need to get the right bits to drill fiberglass).
George the autopilot is back in the aircraft. I moved the autopilot from the big opening above the right yoke to under the left yoke. Two reasons for the move. First, it opens the whole second radio bay for instruments. While I currently only have plans for a transponder’s worth of space, might as well have more just in case. Second, when flying in the left seat, I had to reach across the passenger every time I needed to disengage the autopilot, which is basically every time I needed to switch headings or VORs. George had a tendency to turn to the right when the pilot push-to-talk was depressed when in NAV mode, so I took this opportunity to replace the nav indicator wires with shielded wire, which should solve that problem. Of course, I can’t test that theory until the airplane’s back in the air :).
The GPS mount is also wired up and theoretically is talking to the EDM. I’m not sure I quite followed the directions for setting up the non-primary instruments in the EDM correctly, so this is another one of those things I won’t know for sure until the plane’s in the air. I’m not sure why I originally ran the power cable for the GPS through the panel above the right yoke instead of straight down to the panel holding the intercom. It’s out of the way and looks better where it is now.
With some help from Jeff, the big accomplishment of the day was bleeding the hydraulic lines for landing gear. It only took 4 or 5 cycles of the gear to get everything bled, which was a pleasant surprise. Unfortunately, on the last swing of the day, the left gear safe light didn’t come on. After a bit of debugging, it turned out that the bulb burned out. The unfortunate thing is that it burned out between the second to last and last gear extension, so it was quite unexpected. The Bellanca doesn’t have a gear light test switch, so swapping bulbs is the only way to check for bulb operation.
The outside air temperature (OAT), Manifold Pressure (MAP), and ammeter were successfully hooked up as well. The MAP was a bit tricky, as I had to bend and flare a 3/16″ aluminum tube and then build up a (very) short 1/4″ Aeroquip 303 hose. I had never done either before, so it was a bit of a learning experience. I also verified that all three fuel level sending units are talking to the EDM, so the fuel gauges will work once I do the fuel calibration.
After realizing I had made a silly mistake with the wiring of the starter circuit, the breaker panel is finished. Everything checks out and went back together fairly cleanly. I still have to install the parking brake control cable (the hole at the bottom of the of the little triangular plate next to the circuit breaker panel. Also need to get some white on clear labels and make up labels for the Avionics Master, the parking brake, and the intercom circuit breaker (the 2A breaker not part of the main panel). You can also see the back part of the OAT sensor and the radio selector for the autopilot.
Finally, the wire running across the left side of the panel is now back bundled together. The autopilot panel (the big hole under the left control yoke) isn’t quite finished yet; hopefully this weekend). I need to get some longer zip ties to finish securing all the cables behind the panel on the left side of the panel. The intercom (far right side) panel is out and has a hole for the Garmin power cable. The paint hopefully will be dry tomorrow morning and I can reinstall the intercom and Garmin tomorrow. I need to wire the Garmin into the EDM so that the EDM can display MPG and fuel remain at destination, but that doesn’t look too bad.
The remaining parts to finish hooking up the breaker panel arrived today, so I was able to wire it up and reinstall the panel. I also installed a new wire for the strobe light, in hopes that I can quiet some of the EM noise in the intercom. Since the radios aren’t in their racks, this is a bit hard to test right now, so I’m still hopeful :). Almost everything powered up, with the exception of the starter/cigarette lighter circuit, which trips immediately. So I’ll have to pull the panel back off tomorrow morning and try to figure out where the short is occurring. As you can see, I also have to do some more work securing the wire bundle running across the left side of the panel.
The JPI EDM-900 powered up just fine (woo!). Obviously, a number of sensors still remain to be wired up, which will remove all the red Xs. I think the fuel level gauges are inop because I haven’t gone through the calibration process yet. Otherwise, I have a big problem.
I need a couple parts from Aircraft Spruce to finish wiring behind the panel and to use AirTec’s shear to make some panels to cover removed instruments before I can close up the instrument panel, so hard to make progress there until this weekend. Tonight I got the fuel level gauges wired into the EDM hardness and secured the wire bundle that runs along the front spar carry-through (since the fuel sender wires were the only things that needed to change in that bundle). Of course, I can’t verify everything is wired correctly until I finish with the breaker panel and can power up the EDM.
As you can see, there’s still some major pieces missing from the panel and a rather large rats nest of wire to be cleaned up, but the panel’s starting to come together…
