Chapter 13/21 – Fuel pump installed!

Tonight I continued my roundabout quest to get the nose components in place with the prerequisite task of finishing up the pilot seating area to be able to determine –with a high degree of accuracy– where those nose components should be placed for knee/leg clearance, ergonomics and reachability.

I started out by drilling out the front side mounting holes on the fuel pump to 5/16″ diameter to allow me to slide the hex head cap screw through the front to then hold the fuel pump in place.

After drilling the front side of the fuel pump frame for the 2 top side mounting screws, I mounted the fuel pump . . . officially for the first time!

Here’s a close up of the hex head cap screw/bolt securing the top of the fuel pump in place.  As you can see, I still need to micro & glass the nutplate assemblies into place.

Here’s a shot of the aft left side mounting hole that I drilled out to 5/16″ & tapered with a large 3/4″ countersunk bit for ease of getting the mounting bolt inserted.

I wanted to ensure that all the pieces of my fuel hobby project here would fit together, so I cut a 3″ piece of 3/8″ 3003-0 aluminum fuel line tubing and collected up some fittings to connect the fuel pre-filter OUT to the fuel pump IN line.

With such a small piece space in the flaring & bending tools were TIGHT, but as you can see I was able to get the flares made & tubing bent to connect the pre-filter to the fuel pump.

Here’s another shot after I rotated the tubing downward about another 1/2″.

I then took a break from all this fuel system stuff and gathered up my tool box lid, located the upper latch piece and the requisite rivets.  I then drilled out the half-painted-over holes and proceeded to rivet the upper latch piece in place.

Before assembling the tool box for good, I taped up all of the lower tool box body to protect it from paint except the hinges.  The hinges required a bit of touching up since I had previously broken through to gray primer while wet sanding the lower tool box.  I then prepped the hinges by sanding them lightly (again) and then cleaned them for paint. Finally, I took it outside and hit the hinges with a couple coats of gloss black paint.  [No pics for this task].

With my sideline tool box endeavor out of the way, I wanted to get one more major task completed tonight: run the fuel line from the Andair fuel valve OUT port to the EFII fuel pump pre-filter IN port.

In reality, this task was a 2 part process.  I ended up nearly destroying the first piece of tubing I tried to install here, but then ended up using it as a prototype model to then craft the second tubing with the tubing bender vs. my ham-fisted manipulations of the tubing.  I figure this will the be the most difficult fuel line tubing connection that I’ll have to make on my fuel system.

Beside just getting this tubing piece configured and in place, my actual main goal here was to figure out the positioning of the Andair fuel valve.  As per my norm, you’d probably not be surprised to learn that I am NOT putting this valve in the plans position!  Close, but it will sit over an inch higher and well aft of the plans position.

Why?  Well, in talking to current Long-EZ flyers, and having sat in Marco’s Long-EZ, I can tell you with all certainty that I want to have the ability to SEE what position my fuel selector is set on versus only being able to FEEL the position of my fuel selector valve.  I will of course check this out and ensure I have enough seating room, but beyond any other issues, this is my main goal as far as the fuel valve configuration & installation is concerned.

My last official build act for the evening was wet sanding both the aft NG30 cover and the Garmin GNS480 GPS antenna cover.  I set aside clear coating the NG30 cover until tomorrow since there’s a couple of areas on the cover that I want to assess.  However, with the GPS antenna cover, I hit it with 3 good coats of matt clear coating (yes, crappy pic).

With that, I closed up shop for the evening and left the lovely paint fumes to themselves.

 

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