Seems like it’s been tough to find shop time recently…we’ve got a lot of stuff going on weeknights, and even weekends get busy sometimes. I did get some time in Sunday afternoon, though, which is where most of what I’m writing about here happened. It was just this afternoon that I finished up this bit of work and decided it was worth writing about.
As mentioned previously (I think), I wanted to make a wire guard for the SDS hall sensor. Most folks seem to add some protection here – if the alternator belt fails, it’d be A Bad Thing for it to take out this sensor wiring as well. I followed the lead of other folks here, using some aluminum angle to fabricate the guard. The sensor mount includes a few different 3/16 threaded holes for mounting guards, which I took advantage of. Most of the work here was just laying out the cutout for the wires to pass through, then fine-tuning it for proper fit. Lots of drilling, dremel-ing, and filing.
Also, another fun part of this work – remember all those repeated tries the other day to get the safety wiring job on the sensor mount to my satisfaction? It was pretty clear that the best way to fit this guard was with the sensor mount removed, so I cut off that safety wire work, which made me a tiny bit sad.
Anyway, here’s a look at the backside of the finished guard, showing the two mount bolts. This was just a temporary assembly – for final assembly, both these bolts got lock washers and torque seal for good measure.
Next, a look at the reinstalled mount with the guard and sensor installed:
The next question is where/how to route the sensor wires. I’m thinking about first securing them to the prop oil line (seen in the left of the photo above), but the question is whether they should then go above or below the cylinders. I’m pretty sure above is the right answer, but like all things FWF, it’s something else to go read about.
In other good news, I got my Spruce order in, which includes some raw materials I needed, plus the hardware with which to finally mount my mag-pad coil pack, plus the blanking plate for the other mag pad. I’ve also got my new fuel hoses from AS Specialty coming in Thursday, so I should be able to finalize the fuel line routing this weekend.
I’m thinking I’m pretty close to wanting to hang the engine on the fuselage again, mainly so I can finalize planning the battery box mount and other firewall stuff. I figure I’ll remove the engine one more time to have room to work on that stuff, and then I’ll hang it for good, and start thinking about routing wires and so forth through the firewall…