Chapter 22 – GIB Cabin Lights

I started out today with a goal to complete 2 things: 1) The GIB cabin map & floor lighting relay circuit wiring and 2) the front seat warmer rewiring to replace all the auto-grade wiring with Tefzel wiring.  Well, as things go on this build, I was only able to complete goal #1… but complete it I did (with a video even!) so that’s something.

I started out by reviewing the wiring circuit for the GIB cabin map & floor lighting relay, which is relay #14.  After re-familiarizing myself with how it all goes, I got some wires and diodes and got busy.

Here’s how it looked when I started.

I then added a couple of diodes, one as the flyback diode across the coils and the other for the ground lead to common.

As I was looking for a fairly lengthy ground wire I ran across a twisted pair of 22 AWG white and black wires about 5 ft long that I had picked up from Stein at some point. Knowing that I was running low on opportunities to use this kind of pre-configured stuff I quickly pressed it into service.

A point of note, however, only the black ground wire below is from the twisted pair.  The white wire is about 9″ long and goes to the white light/red light selector switch.

I then added in the green and white control wires that are used to power either the white or red LED lights on the map light (an either/or setup).

I then finished soldering all the other wires onto the relay tabs.

I then wrapped the wires around the relay and tied them with cable lace to ensure the wires were secured in place.

I then covered all that with a 1″ diameter piece of heat shrink, and finished off the relay build with a couple of labels.  Here’s side A and side B.

And here’s the whole GIB cabin map & floor lighting relay circuit wiring with the map light added into the pic. Since the floor lights are already mounted into the fuselage I couldn’t/ didn’t add them here.

Then I ran into an issue…. took me a while and some in-depth step-by-step troubleshooting to first ascertain that I hadn’t wired anything incorrectly, then next re-evaltuate my circuit to ensure I actually designed it correctly, then finally I was specifically able to narrow down my issue to the relay coil.  It was just spotty and unreliable…. for unknown reasons (to me anyway) it would work here, but not there.

I then slightly modified the circuit and used a SPDT automotive relay that I had on hand and it worked a treat (for you Dave!) . . . so I yanked the “old” relay, finalized the new circuit design, did a final test, and then wired up the new relay.

Here’s a couple shots of the new 12V SPDT automotive relay that I swapped out the “old” DPDT relay with (I’m running low on solder and honestly didn’t want to take the time, so I used PIDG Fast-ON terminals):

After I finished wiring up the new relay, I tested out the circuit.  It looked good so I figured I would try out my Christmas present from Marco: a tripod for taking NON-bouncy videos (the wimp said my videos were making him seasick…. man up! ha!).  So here it is:

With another fairly thorough test completed during the video taping, I then cut another piece of 1″ diameter heat shrink, wrapped the relay wire leads to secure them, then heat shrank it all.  Of course I then re-labled my new relay #14.

I snapped the cover off the “old” relay to see if I could see any damage or scorch marks in case I had fried it somehow (I did fry a diode about 6 months back, but the relay seemed fine…. I guess not).

In addition to getting the GIB cabin map & floor lighting relay wired up, I also spoke with Bill at Airflow Systems to see about the possibility of swapping out my 2008X 17-row oil cooler for a 2006X 13-row oil cooler.  Since I’m not using tapered cylinders on my IOX-340S engine now and my compression is not super high (9.3:1) then I’m going to make my life easier (we discussed the specs and oil cooling requirements of course) when it comes to oil cooler placement and installation by picking up an oil cooler that’s about 1.5″ less in length than I have currently.  Thus, I plan on sending my 2008X in for replacement here within the next week.

As for build tasks, the weather is getting warmer . . . during the day.  But for the next 7-10 days we still have dips down into the 30s at night.  I do plan on getting into the shop, but I will get some more of these electrical system tasks knocked out during the next couple weeks as well.

 

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