Feb 25, 2024     Evaporator drain hose - (1.5 hours)       Category: Air Conditioner

Got the drain hose for the evaporator installed. Drilled a 3/8” hole in the bottom skin and then drilled holes in the plastic drain fitting that Airflow provided. Then match drilled those holes to the bottom skin. Used close quarters dimple tool to get flush pull rivets installed.

  Feb 12, 2024     AC Hoses - (2.5 hours)       Category: Air Conditioner

My nephew Max is in town for a couple of days to get some good plane work done. After his review of the AC installation, We got to work on crimping some of the hoses. Started with the ones in the tunnel. Used a hydraulic crimper I got from Amazon that seems pretty legit. First crimp came out good and then moved on to the smaller hose. That crimp looked ok, but definitely not as good as the first. Did another end and it didn't even crimp at all, hose came right out. Was this Amazon crimper junk? Finally realized it was user error. 8mm does not mean #8 die. 8mm hose is actuall #6 hose, and 10 mm hose is #8. Got the correct #6 die in place and recrimped - good crimp.

Proceeded to get all the hose ends except the firewall, I'll wait on those. Pulled the caps and loosely installed hoses ends on the evaporator and the condenser. Installed the grommets in the bottom of the plane for the condenser penetrations. It is tough to balance the grommet between hose size and ability to install. They're a little loose around the pipe. Max suggested the pros would fill the gaps with proseal.

  Feb 10, 2024     Evaporator mounting - (6.0 hours)       Category: Air Conditioner

Got a lot done on the evaporator. With the lower bulkhead cut and the upper bulkhead at least fitted, I was able to locate the upper bolt holes for the evaporator to baggage bulkhead. This locks in the final position of everything and it all fits well. I also located and drilled the Airflow System intake grill, and temporarily installed the air vents - looks pretty sweet.

Now I'm also able to move forward with the final mounting of the evaporator. I started with match drilling the three holes on each side that attach to the longeron support plates. Then I double checked the center of everything and marked the holes in the support tubing for the main slotted holes. Then moved over to the drill press to drill the four holes. Reinstalled and double checked everything. Trial fit the relay box and realized that it makes sense to utilize one of the evaporator bolts to also support the relay. Happy with the orientation of the relay, I disassembled everything again and drilled the remaining holes for the relay to the support frame on the drill press. Reassembled everything and the fit up was good. I did elect to put a local ground to the support frame adjacent to the relay box - it'll just be for the relay box and fan.

Before final assembly, I also had to re-install, hopefully for the last time, the battery/bellcrank assembly. I wanted to install a nice grounding stud while I had it apart. Put in a 1/4" stud per AC43-13 with aluminum washers and steel lock washers. Need to get some low-profile nuts.

With the battery tray re-installed, torqued and marked, I moved on to the final assembly of the evaporator. Riveted the longeron support plates in place, then installed the tray with the final hardware and torqued. Then installed the evaporator, relay box and dryer. I opted not to prime any of the AC hardware. It's 6061 and doesn't really need it.

Went ahead and ran wires for the relays and connections to the pressure switch and temp switch. Nice to be doing wiring. Went ahead and made up the harness that will connect to the plug supplied by Airflow Systems and run the wires to the front.

2/12: temporarily ran the rear seat shoulder harness cables just to confirm everything clears and I wasn't happy with how close the top of the dryer is to the cable run. Flipping the dryer bracket to the bottom of the evaporator tray allows me to lower it a bit, but the high pressure service port limits how much. We'll see how it looks when the hoses are run.

  Feb 01, 2024     AC progress - (7.0 hours)       Category: Air Conditioner

Finally bit the bullet and spent an hour on my back underneath the plane countersinking all of the holes for the condenser scoop nutplates. Dabbed a little primer on each. These will be ready to rivet.

Then moved back to the tunnel hose routing. I changed it up a bit and opted use adel clamps for the hoses rather than the little grommet support I had been thinking. This is much more secure. I still am adding some snap ring supports for the rudder cables and placing them directly over the adel clamp so even if the cables are completely slack there is no way they could snag on a clamp. This basically completes the hose routing in the baggage area.

2/3: big day today. Finally got all of the nutplates for the condenser scoop installed. It was a lot of work, and my wife helped me rivet everything. Didn't take any pictures of nutplates, but did get the condenser scoop temporarily installed.

This is a big milestone as I can now get to work on finishing our the floors.

  Jan 13, 2024     AC: Tunnel hose routing and condenser work - (4.0 hours)       Category: Air Conditioner

A lot of time just thinking and tinkering with this throughout the week. Finally started cutting some metal. There are two options for the condenser connections - inside the tunnel or outside. Inside is a little tight adjacent to the elevator pushrod and the rudder cables. But outside, I'd need to make some new access panels below the rear seats to access the connections. The 3D model shows inside the tunnel, so I'm going with that.

The hoses have to penetrate the rear seat bulkhead and it is very tight with the existing holes for elevator pushrod and rudder cables. I strategically located the two new holes to provide maximum edge distance between the holes. Still, it felt like I was not leaving a lot of material in the bulkhead so I opted to fabricate a little doubler out of 0.040” scrap aluminum. Then to secure the hoses inside the tunnel in the baggage area, I fabricated a clip angle for the #10 hose. I was able to use a Vans clip for the #8. Then wanted to secure the rudder cables a little more out of the way just in case they ever go slack, so cut a slot in the vans clips and a slot in a snap bushing to slide over the cables. Drilled and cleco'd all of those angles in place to see how the fit looks. Not bad.

Redrilled all the belly scoop holes. And then drilled all of the holes for nut plates. Need to order more single lug nut plates to finish those off.

Mounted the condenser back in the scoop and marked where the hoses will penetrate the bottom skin. Drilled those holes and fabricated a doubler for those penetrations. The AC kit came with two small individual doublers. I put a larger single piece doubler across both holes.

With the hose routing and the condenser hose connection locations, I need something like a 75 degree bend in the connector, not the 90 supplied. I tried a 45 bend connector for giggles but it is not right. Something in between is what I need. Don't know if I can bend the connectors that were supplied.

  Jan 07, 2024     AC - Condenser scoop - (3.5 hours)       Category: Air Conditioner

I had previously marked the centerline on the belly of the fuselage in preparation of mounting the scoop. Then tried my best to mark the centerline of the scoop itself which was a bit of a challenge. It is a compound curved piece and the flange width around the perimeter is not perfectly symmetrical. I felt pretty good about measuring to the middle of the scoop on the front, but the back was a challenge. I measured it several ways and sort of took the average.

Strapped the scoop under the fuselage and set it on centerline and the prescribed distance back. Then roughly marked areas where I did not want want screws - conflicts with ribs and spars. Then removed scoop and laid out the screw holes on roughly 3” centers and missing the conflicts. Drilled #40 holes in the scoop.

Back under the fuse, held the scoop in place and started match drilling holes working from the front and inserting clecos as I went. Used a heat gun to try to soften up the fiberglass and allow it to contour to the belly. Not sure how much that helped, but eventually got it to fit pretty well. Once all clecos were in place, it was obvious that I should tighten up the spacing near the kink in the belly to hold the scoop tighter. So adjusted the spacing a bit and made a few new holes. Ok, several new holes.

Satisfied with the fit, I upsized the good #40 holes to #19. Pulled everything back apart and filled the extra holes in the scoop with epoxy and filled the skin holes with JB Weld. Just cosmetic.

This makes it seem simple. In truth it was a lot of back and forth, on and off, climbing under the plane, realizing I didn't have the right tools, squirming out and repeating. Nice to have it roughly mounted though. Still a lot of work to get the 30+ nut plates installed.

  Jan 05, 2024     AC - More hose Routing - (3.0 hours)       Category: Air Conditioner

Have been working through different scenarios for routing of the AC hoses down the co-pilot side. Purchase a variety of grommets and snap bushings from ACS and finally settled on a combination that fits the holes. I wanted to run the hoses through the top two holes in the F-1004 and F1-005 spar bulkheads, but there would not be very much material left at the top if I were to enlarge the existing top hole. Opted to move everything down and drill two new lower holes for wires in the spar bulkheads.

The F-1034 rear seat back bulkheads are pretty thin and although they already have large holes in them, I needed to enlarge two of them for the hoses. I opted to go ahead and make a doubler for this location.

Will still need to clean up with some zip tie mounts, but this is worked out enough to let me proceed.

  Dec 27, 2023     AC - baggage area work - (4.3 hours)       Category: Air Conditioner

AC instructions show hoses running down the copilot side. That should work, but I need to figure out how to get them through the baggage area and through the baggage bulkhead. This will require cutting two 1.125” holes in the fuselage former. I planned out a doubler for this former out of 0.032”. Decided to reinforce the face of the former and wrap it around to river to the skin too. This should allow me to minimize the edge distance for the AC holes and reduce the loss of baggage space.

Will also need to figure out modifications to the baggage area cover on the copilot side. I will either change the angle of the whole cover plate or just fabricate a little cover out of aluminum or fiverglasss to cover the hoses.

Mocked up a little cardboard piece to see what a cover might look like. I think it will work well.

12/28: got some better poster board to continue refining the cover plate. It will need to extend all the way under the bulkhead closure panel which will change the angle a bit. Used the olde baggage closure panel and it cut to where I think it would need to be to maintain screw spacing and edge distances. Gives me a good feel for the cover plate and then I can transfer the marks to the new baggage closure panel that Airflow Performance provided.

Thinking now about making it all removable. Would just need nut plates to the longeron and in the baggage floor.

12/30: spending about a 10:1 ratio of thinking time to doing time on this. Finally made a cut in the baggage area side cover plate. It will get covered with the new plate I have yet to fabricate. If it's going to be removable, a couple of the existing holes are too close to stiffeners or ribs so I cosmetically filled them with JB weld and will drill new holes for #8 screws. Cut the AC bulkhead and match drilled the holes based on the original bulkhead. Coming together slowly.

1/2: bent the aluminum version of the cover plate and it came out good on the first try. Went ahead and drilled the holes to the baggage floor and to the longeron. Found that I was able to tap the holes in the longeron for #8 screws.

1/3: drilled out the holes in the skin that coincide with the stiffener I'm putting in. Then match drilled and dimpled the hole in the stiffener. Then laid out the holes from the stiffener to the baggage bulkhead and drilled the two large holes for the AC lines. Will still add some mounts and zip ties to secure everything but so far it seems to all fit pretty well and as planned.

  Dec 22, 2023     Air conditioner arrived - (3.0 hours)       Category: Air Conditioner

AC arrived today and I spent about an hour inventorying the kit. Everything was included although the 3” skeet tubing needs to be replaced. Quick email to Bill and a new one is one the way. The aluminum bulkhead was also bent a little in two corners but I was able to bend it back with a hand seamer. It's not perfect but good enough. Really impressive kit. Everything well packaged and the evaporator and manifold are both very nicely made plastic. I separated all the FWF items that I won't need for a while and put them away.

Couldnt help but start framing up the evaporator a bit. Marked the longerons and clamped the support plates in place. Drilled the holes. Exciting stuff.

12/24: installed the temp probe into the coil and attached to the side of the evaporator frame. Photos in instructions show electrical connections going forward, but model shows them going back. Going back gives more room so going with that even it meant drilling new holes for mounting. Instruction indicated that was possible. Marked the centerline of the condenser scoop and marked the centerline of the bottom of fuselage.

Loosely mounted the condenser scoop under the fuselage and confirmed a fear. The condenser conflicts with the hole in the bottom of the fuse that I made for the com antenna. I'll have to move it and plug the hole.

  Oct 14, 2023     Air Conditioner Planning       Category: Air Conditioner

When I started the build, I promised my wife we would have an air conditioner. I have since waffled a bit on that promise as costs are adding up, and I was thinking the overhead console with rear NACA vents might be enough. After this very hot summer of not flying GA primarily because of the miserable thought of getting in the airplane, and then finally our annual trip to Port Aransas really convinced me that we need it. I realized an AC was more than a convenience, it is a safety issue in Texas. If I'm discouraged from flying all summer because of the heat, then I won't be proficient in the fall when we want to make trips. Not to mention not utilizing the airplane for 4 months out of the year is a real waste and it's only going to get hotter. Maybe more important, what is the point of having the airplane if I'm always going to be apologizing to my passengers with some vague wishful thinking that it cools off once we get to altitude. So, I'm pulling the trigger on the AC and making good on the promise I made to her, and myself, at the beginning of the build.

Now is the time to make the install before I close up anything in the fuselage.

Reached out to Airflow Systems and got some details on their latest system. It seems they have made some upgrades over the years, and the new system fully integrates into an Aerosport overhead console, as well as still providing rear bulkhead vents. The whole install looks very well developed and doable. Also the weight is listed quite a bit less than previously at 46 lbs. I got these install photos from them along with a link to a cool 3D model that shows the install.

https://a360.co/3XT9Fen

Sent a deposit. 7 week lead time.