This entry is for work completed yesterday.

Started the morning by installing the firewall passthroughs that I got from ACS. (FYI- I saw thet several people on VAF have used stainless shower rod holders from amazon to fulfill this same purpose, but I think that's somewhat questionable from a QC standpoint, so I sprung for the real ones. Not cheap, but they also came with everything to complete the installation. clamps, hardware etc. which was nice.

Anyway, you'll notice that these are not symmetrical. Thats to give lots of knuckle space from the brake master cylinder on the starboard side and from the future oil cooler duct on the port side.

They installation of these is pretty straight forward, but they require a 1 1/8" hole. I don't have a chassis press nor am I going to buy one for two holes. I drilled these with a 1" unibit. The firewall is only about .017 thick, so by the time you get up to a hole that big, the bit is chattering a little, and it also actually radiuses a flange on the inside of the hole as it pokes through.

I have a unibit that goes bigger, but didn't see a need to use it. once I got to 1", I got out the dotco with a new rotary file and cleaned up the radius & it was almost perfect.

Before snugging this all down, I sealed the mounting flanges with flame master 1000. I'm making that little tube that came with the heater valve go a long way!

Task two was to figure out how to insulate the battery positive lead where it goes into the master contactor. Then issue here is that this wire is always hot, and it's capable of dumping a lot of amps if something shorts it to the firewall. I know a lot of guys who don't worry about it since it's pretty well hidden under the battery, and they are convinced that good shop practice will keep them from ever having a problem.

Honestly, they're probably right, but if I dig 30 years deep into the sock drawer, I can show you a melted spot on my high school class ring (which I was wearing at the time) that illustrates pretty clearly that it's a good idea to cap those battery cables.

Anyway, the issue that needs to be overcome is that standard boots are pretty much all designed for a straight terminal lug, but the layout of everything in the RV7 requires a 90* lug. To fit properly, the boot needs to be an "S" shape, not an "L" shape.

After playing around with this for a while, my solution was to cut up two boots and use them together, with the top one being wire tied to the terminal lug so it's not going anywhere.

Located and installed the ammeter shunt. There are two schools of thought on where this should connect. If you put it on the B lead, it will show alternator output. if you put it downstream of the battery contactor it will show the total load. of everything you have turned on.

Option 2 is what I'm used to, so thats how I installed this one.

Note there's no cover on this as received from garmin, but it's only hot when the master is on. I can't imagine why I would ever be under the hood with the master on, so I may or may not craft a cover for this at some point.

I was planning to mount the shunt via some #8 screws into nut plates, but the mounting holes are 3/16 and the fwd side of the base is milled to capture the heads of AN3 bolts, so it was easier to just poke a couple of bolts in there and use fiber lock nuts from the cabin side.

The final detail of the day was to go to Ace and get some stainless lock washers and and better nuts. I put a split washer next to the firewall on the ground stud, as well as on the Blue Sea ANL holders. At this point I'm feeling pretty good about the robustness of my main ship electrical architecture.