The battery vent hose routing was completed. This directs any unwanted gases from the battery out the airplane in the unlikely event of a (lithium) battery failure.
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| Battery vent tubing installed |
More wiring bundling and cleanup was completed. We are pretty much done with the wiring now until we get the chance to put the wings back on, in which case we will wire up the navigation lights and magnetometer.
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| Wire bundling behind the instrument panel |
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| Wires bundled and routed behind pedals |
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| Wire bundling in back of airplane |
We ran into a few issues with the brakes. When attempting to bleed the brakes, we found some problems. One is that the parking brake valve was reversed. This was corrected. But then we realized an issue that we should have found sooner. Our brakes have 2 master cylinders, one attached to the backside of each of the pilot's pedals. The top of the master cylinders need to be at the highest point in the hydraulic system because they have an integrated resevoir for the brake system. Unfortunately this was not the case because our parking brake valve sits much higher on the firewall. We figured there are 2 ways to fix this. Either change the brake system to add an auxiliary resevoir at a higher point (also requires us to change 2 cylinders), or just remove the parking brake. To keep the parking brake, we figured we'd have to spend another $500 or so, and add more weight. This didn't seem worth it since the parking brake is not required, so we decided to remove the parking brake. Kind of a pity since so much time was spent on this, but we both think this is the best decision in the end. We can always add it back later if we change our minds.
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| Michael bleeding the brakes |
Lastly, four nutserts were installed for the fuel on/off switch. This will allow us to install the plate with simple 8-32 screws instead of the sheetmetal screws that were part of the original plans. Hours: 20
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