So…I picked up on engine work yesterday, with the intent of installing the fuel flow transducer, along with the short fuel hose between it and the throttle body. Let’s just say that I vastly underestimated the challenges in getting that thing mounted. I’m using a mount kit that I got from AS Flightlines, which includes a little bracket that bolts to the engine case and houses the transducer itself.
The challenges here are multiple: First, the transducer is a very tight fit in the bracket…to the point that I couldn’t get it in far enough for the mount bolt holes to line up. Second, with the bracket mounted on the case, it’s impossible to even get the through bolts in due to the proximity of the pushrod tubes. That second issue could be fixed by installing the transducer into the mount off the engine, but then the bolt to attach the bracket to the engine is behind the transducer.
Eventually I gave up in frustration and made a post on VAF to try and figure out if I was doing something wrong. Much to my surprise, I got an email this morning from Tom Swearingen, the vendor in question, with some tips for getting the thing installed. While this helped quite a bit, I still was never able to get the thing installed today. The basic procedure is to loosely install the bracket, insert the transducer (side note: I just needed a bit more force to solve Problem #1 above), then rotate the entire assembly to where the upper through bolt can be inserted, thus solving Problem #2.
This still leaves a significant challenge, which is figuring out how to tighten that mount bolt. Tom suggested that it could be done with a stubby wrench and “some patience,” but I was never able to even get a wrench on the thing once, much less the who-knows-how-many times I’d need to snug the bolt up. I think I have a solution to this, involving some modifications to a cheap combination wrench, but I need to get a better torch for the heating & bending portion of that program, so I’ll have to try and pick back up on this tomorrow.
Having set that aside for the day, I decided to move on to some other minor stuff. I got out my neat little safety-wire jig and used it to drill two opposite corners of the oil temp sensor, after which I final-torqued it and worked on safety wiring. My initial plan was to safety the sensor to the vernatherm right below it, but the relative positions were such that the wire wanted to slide off the back of the sensor. Instead I used the two provided holes in the filter adapter and safetied each item individually:
Although now that I look at this photo, I safetied the vernatherm the wrong way. Well, that’s kinda embarrassing…
Next, I moved on to the magneto pads. My Spruce order included the hardware required to take care of this stuff, so first up I installed the blanking plate on the right-side pad:
The left side gets the coil pack base plate, installed using two nicely machined hold-downs:
And then the coil pack mount gets bolted onto the base plate:
Those three bolts still need to be safety-wired, but I think I’ll remove the coil pack from its mount to do that – that’s gonna be some tight-quarters work.
So that’s it for tonight, though I think now I’m going to go out and fix that safety-wire job on the vernatherm, before I forget about it…