Title: Doors, Hot air tube, wires
I did a little more work on the doors getting the interior handles that help pull the door down when it is fully open. It was straight forward. Next, I worked on getting some 1" CEET tubing installed in the wing spar that will bring hot air from the center channel to the back seat floor vents. I also cut the holes and mounted the repurposed vents that were on the dash to the rear seat floors. My only concern was making sure the tubing didnt interfere with flight controls. I used some foam blocking and a friction fit to hold the tubing up above the flight control tubes. Also along with the tubing I installed the bowden cable that controls the heat valve. I found the provided cable to be way (about a foot and a half) too long. I cut the tubing and redid the Z bend and hooked it all back up. With the shorted cable and some lithium grease the valve is moved much easier now. I also decided to remove the heat shield for the firewall. The reason is the factory stuff burns rather easily and i question if it will do anything in a fire. I have decided to used Contego Intumescent paint (https://contegointernational.com/contego-original/). I think this will greatly improve my chances in case of a fire. I worked a little on the upper avionics fiberglass cover. It didnt have a straight reveal so I marked my line and did an initial cut to make the panel have a more even reveal. The SteinAir vents that I purchased are just a tad too small for the vent holes that were already cut into the dash. The holes were also just a bit too big for the factory installed vents. I contemplated requesting a new dash but I instead opted to make some aluminum rings what go around the vents and cover the fact that the dash holes are just a bit too big. For making the rings completely by hand I am pretty happy with how they came out. This week I also tested the dimmers that I received from Midwest Panel Builders. The 10K analog dimmers are nothing special but what I didnt like was that about 90% of the knob movement only dims the lights about 10%. But then the remaining 10% movement dims the lights the last 90%. Not the end of the world but its an easy fix. I bough some mini PWM dimmers that are made for the job. The dimming is now linear and another plus is that the dimmers click in the off position and 100% turn off the lights. The analog dimmers still had the lights on, albeit the were very dim. I also reworked the fuel X-fer pump switches. The parts that midwest sent didnt work for how I intended to wire things up. While I am sure Midwest's way works fine I felt it was needlessly complicated (circuit boards, WiFi enabled timers, no instructions) and I therefore made it much more simple but I did have to get some different latching push button switches. My process involves an 'Arm' switch that provides ground the the push button switches. Those push button switches provide ground to the VPX. One the VPX provides power to the pumps, it also provides power the the LED indicator light within the push button switch. That light in the switch will be on when the pump is getting power regardless of anything else. With all that fun out of the way, on to the main even, while it may not look like much wire work has been done I got a lot more wiring done and have worked on the IBBS battery backup, some RS-232 connections and the main connector on the Garmin display unit. This has been more time consuming as I have to go thru more details but its also good because I have been learning about features that I didnt know Garmin had and als how to wire them up. I am about ready to start powering things on and testing but I had to buy a Windows laptop to program the VPX. The computer is currently in the mail so hopefully I can start powering things on next week.


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