Distractions, Part Deux

 I still seem to be paying back for some horrible act or crime - how else to explain the series of trials and tribulations I have recently been dealing with? The airplane is still running rough at idle when one of the magnetos is turned off. The installation of a new sparkplug cap was easy enough, but the engine is still a bit off. That might be due to the spark plug wire or one of the (expensive) ignition modules. It also might be something completely different. Over my 30 year career in IT, I learned that two problems that seem to be related probably aren't.

That's just the way these things go.

Case in point: note the rain on the windshield. Note that it has not been removed my the windshield wiper. Also note that we have been living with drought conditions for a month. 

Perfect timing.

That absence was caused by my optimistic action of activating the wipers - on the very first sweep of the driver's side wiper, the entire blade departed the car. I saw it go, and I saw it hit the car next to me. 

I love to share my burdens. I'm generous that way. This was the day after the windshield had to be repaired after I was struck by a goodly sized rock on the way home from the last time I worked on the car. I heard it hit, but wasn't able to find the huge dent that would naturally result from bring hit by a rock at 75 mph.

The windshield took one for the team. $69 repair. Much cheaper than body work! Still, it was a very uncomfortable drive.

On another sad subject - Grant's wonderful dog Hank passed away. I might have mentioned that in a previous post. Either way, there is news on that front as well. 

It is my pleasure to introduce Lupus:

Lupus now sits in the very seat Hank would use while we were in the shop. He's an absolutely wonderful dog, Calm and friendly: two critical personality traits in a dog that big.

I'm in love with him already.

Having tossed the blingy metal radiator hose (we are dumping every bit of bling we can - bright & shiny is not what I'm aiming for on the aesthetic front) and replaced it with a far more robust rubber hose, we moved on to other projects.

Probably trying to keep me out of his way (for being such a skinny guy, I seem to always be in the way of somebody - I can't look for a can of soup at Walmart without a line forming behind me) - Grant suggested that I install the shifter handle. Little did he know that I had attempted that seeming trivial job a few weeks ago, but apparently mis-drilled the holes - the bolts would not line up. I could get one in, but the other would not fit. I quietly returned the shifter handle to where I found it. Well, in the neighborhood, anyway. 

A less charitable view would say that I HID it. 

That view would be painfully close to the truth.

So, I puttered around with it while trying to come up with a plausible story. Being a pretty sharp guy, Grant soon noticed that it was taking an inordinate amount of time to perform such a simple task. 

Yeah, I know, this displays a notable level of cowardice on my part, but just like Popeye, I yam what I yam.

"What's the problem?" he asked.

"Bolts are being stubborn," I replied, while bracing myself for some type of reprimand or caustic evaluation of my intelligence and/or mental acumen.

"Then just drill the holes a little bigger." he replied.

Oh. Duh.

Next up: the dashboard. The Naugahyde was nice and mostly flat after sitting flat for awhile and we're just about ready to install the panel, so the gauges had to be removed. We weren't quite ready to apply it yet, though. I had failed to drill the holes for a triad of idiot lights. One to indicate that the high beams are on, and the other two for the turn signals. The turn signal lights are going to be especially important for two reasons: there is no ticky-tocky sound like you get in a store-bought car, and even if there was, I wouldn't be able to hear it over the noise of the engine and wind.

Yes, I KNOW that they are not equally spaced. Even if I couldn't see that for myself, my seeing eye dog of a brother noted (and commented on) that fact almost immediately. Things like this crop up with the airplane, too. My response to those who have never built an airplane (which is a VERY large percentage of humans) is that I want it to look homemade. I mean, it was three years of work - I want some credit!

So, there it is!

Grant's inner seamstress took over to cut out an appropriate sized and shaped piece of hide.

It was glued onto the aluminum with some kind of aerosol glue that came out of the can like spider webs. Nifty!

It needs to sit for awhile before we cut out the places where the gauges will go, so that was the end of work for the day.

Oh, we replaced both of my wiper blades before I left.

Not a drop of rain the whole way back. 

That figures.

Work time for this step:  5 hours.

Unproductive time: 2 hours of bonding with Lupus. 

Frustration Level: 1/10 for car, to hell with the airplane. I'll get around to it eventually.

Total time of build: 119 hours (car).

Distractions

If it seems like awhile since we've seen an update on the project, well, that's because it's been awhile since we worked on it. To some degree aviation has taken up a lot of my time. 

First up is the nice ride that I had in a very old, non-electrical system Piper J3 Cub. Non-electrical means a lack of modern equipment, up to and including the utter lack of a starter motor. Hand propping was required. Fortunately, I didn't have to do it. The other neat thing about the cold Cubs is that the passenger (that would be me) gets to ride in the front seat. 

We flew for about an hour. In terms of distance, we went about 20 miles. Or so it felt. It is not common to look down on the cars driving along the country roads while, but it is unusual for them to be going faster!

Aviation intruded in a much bigger way with regards to my plane. It's due for it's FAA-mandated annual inspection. This is a task that presents far more opportunity to break things that weren't broken, but it is also a great opportunity to find and fix things that were either already broken or soon to be.

The biggest pain in the tail feathers is rounding out screws. This one in particular did not want to come out. I had to resort to one of my homegrown techniques, which is another way of saying "hack it or crack it." 

I invented the idea of using a hacksaw blade to cut a slot for my biggest non-phillips screwdriver - it works passably well.

The slot wears out quickly, but in only needs to lift the screw head high enough to get tool $2 in place.

I still found time to get out to the shop one fine misty day but... no work was performed. I arrived to find Grant in a very somber mood. His dog Hank had passed away overnight. Hank was a short, stout, black mongrel with a heart of gold. He will be missed.

The weather is starting to change as well. It's a pleasant 70-ish degrees, but misty in the mornings. I used to pet this guy and give him treats, but he bit my hand last year (quite painfully) so I now keep my distance.

When we finally got back to working on the car, we test fit the dashboard to the chassis. It looks great, but we decided that the panel needs a bit of bling. We debated paint vs. something more hip for awhile, but we did agree that a dark gray would look good in contrast to the entirely black car.

As it turns out, Naugahyde™ is relatively cheap. You get a lot for $17.

The car is progressing nicely, but the airplane is still not ready to fly. I replaced the sparkplug cap as reported in the last post, but that did not fix the problem. I've stewed over what to do about it for days. The RPM drop is still within spec for flying, but I don't think its a very good idea to fly it. I've talked to mechanics and other RV-12 folks but no one has a clue to lend me.

I have one more thing to try: I'm going to take the plug cap off again and trim back some of the sparkplug wire. There's not a lot that I can trim off because Rotax was mighty selfish on the length of the wires, but I only need to cut back a 1/4" or so.

Wish me luck!

Work time for this step:  3 hours.

Unproductive time: Tons, but justifiable. 

Frustration Level: 1/10 for car, 11/10 for airplane.

Total time of build: 114 hours (car).

First Engine Start and Dashboard Population

It's been a bit longer between work sessions than usual again - I had one of those weeks when there's some little thing that I have to do during the day. With a three hour roundtrip, even the most modest time demand ruins the entire day. It was a more than usual frustrating gap because we were just about ready to start the engine for the first time. 

It couldn't be run for more than a few seconds, but even that would be one of the more compelling high points of the entire build. It would be akin to the first little twitch of an eyelid on Frankenstein's creation. 

Not much in the grand scheme, but a foreshadowing of things to come.

With that accomplished, I turned my attention to getting started on the dashboard. The first step was to open up some of the "optional" spaces on the panel. 

The two largest holes will house the speedometer an the tachometer. The speedometer is GPS-driven, which will make it a lot more accurate than a purely mechanical gauge.

This is a tentative layout. I'm not especially particular when it comes to gauge placement - I'll get used to it pretty quickly. The black button on the lower left is the horn button (not the greatest way of doing it, but easier than mounting it on the steering wheel), the toggle in the middle is the turn indicators (left/right) and will also take some time to get used to, and the silver knob controls the headlights and the instrument backlighting.

The back side is a bit sloppy at this point. The black and white wires that jump from gauge to gauge are for the internal nightlights in the gauges.

The lighting kits included a couple of colors (red and green) for the backlighting if plain old white is to blah. I went with red.

I'm still pondering the order and placement of the gauges, but this looks pretty good to me.

On the home front, the airplane is due for its annual inspection. I typically pull out all of the sparkplugs early in the process - the sparkplugs for a Rotax 912 are dirt cheap ($1.35 each) compared to legacy plugs used in older technology engines - those start at around $45 each and they go up from there. I just replace all eight every year. 

Most of them look fine, but there are a couple that look like they've been running cool. There isn't much that I can do about it.

Prior to removing the plugs, I do a tug test on the caps. They should not come off with anything less than a 7 lb. tug. That had never been a problem before, but the #3 cylinder top plug had zero resistance at all. Even a 7 OUNCE tug pulled the cap off. It's an easy fix, but it's a $55 part that I won't receive until at least Oct 3 - basically a 3 week wait.

Injury to insult, I managed to slice my finger right next to a previous cut from my weed whacker that has just now started to heal. This newest cut was fairly deep, so it would need to be bandaged. Which would be no problem is I was smart enough to have some Bandaids in the hangar...

Fortunately (or unfortunately, I suppose) I have learned how to do field repairs. A strip of paper towel and a bit of blue masking tape usually does the trick.

 

So, quite an eventful day!

Work time for this step:  5 hours.

Unproductive time: None. 

Frustration Level: 2/10 for car, 8/10 for airplane.

Total time of build: 111 hours (car).

Comfort zones

The 90 minute drive out to the shop has long been routine, but now it's starting to get boring. Highway patrol enforcement zones are well known and easily defeated with the Waze app on my iPhone. Not that I'm going all that fast - usually just enough to tag along with whomever is in front of me. The real problem on the outgoing leg is the sun blasting its reflection right into my eyes - I have to avert my rear and side view mirrors to avoid blindness. It's a bit of a pain, but some days.... that big old moon is awesome to see.

I arrived to find that yet another F5 supplied part had been relegated to "sell this to someone" pile. In this case it's the blinged up water pump that came with the Blueprint engine. The objection is not that it's unneeded and unwanted ostentatiousness (although that is a factor), it's the fact that the chroming process introduces the risk of breaking/cracking. A standard replacement pump was deemed to be relatively cheap insurance. 

Also residing in the Shelf of Shame pile... the power steering pump. I'm a bit suspicious about the rationale on this one - the stated reason that I can't have power steering is allegedly because we don't have a "power steering front axle" - that doesn't pass the smell test, but that's only because I don't remember seeing a choice of front axles when I was picking out options for the kit. I'll let it go for now, but if I find the steering to be abusively hard to turn, well, I don't know what I'm going to do, but I am for sure holding onto that pump until I try driving without it. 

My job for the day was to finish up most of the remaining riveting on the cockpit aluminum.

This is actually an arena that I can participate in. That said, I was not considering the difference of riveting aluminum on the airplane, which came mostly pre-drilled and was almost entirely aluminum to aluminum, versus drilling through the aluminum into steel. There's a whole new technique for drilling into steel efficiently that took me quite awhile to learn. Pressure and drill speed are the primary factors for easy-ish drilling. I'm also glad that I had the foresight to bring a passel of gold clecos.

What I wish I had brought is my one-gallon shop vac. 

I think it all worked out pretty well.

Meanwhile, Grant was fabricating a mount for the battery. It looks pretty simple, but it was not. Grant has enough experience with this kind of thing to know where, when, and how to mount a battery.

He also knows a bit about how to interface the battery to the power lines.

He really hates these Ford connection to the fuel level sender. He's quite unhappy with the provided connector and wants me to find something better.

I'm here to tell you that he is very likely to be disappointed. I do agree that the current connector does not inspire a high level of confidence, though. Oh well, it will not be the first, nor the last, time I disappoint him. I've been married long enough to have learned how to live with (and constantly be reminded of) my multitudinous weaknesses and failures. 

Que sera, sera.

On my way home a Highway Patrol car came flying up behind me with lights flashing... I was doing 75 mph in a 70 mph zone - that's not typically enough to warrant a citation. The trooper passed me and slid into the gap between me and an old Honda Civic. He pulled over the Honda. He wasn't going any faster than I was, but he had failed to move over from the leftmost lane (aka the "fast lane") to give room to the trooper sitting on the shoulder. Tough luck, that.

Work time for this step:  6.5 hours.

Unproductive time: None. 

Frustration Level: 2/10.

Total time of build: 106-ish hours.