Today I took a hard look at my engine preservation steps.  I’m not exactly sure what’s going on with my engine dehydrator.  It’s definitely doing something because the “dilithium” crystals (desiccant) are turning pink, but the humidity sensor on my out air line keeps showing an internal relative humidity only about 5% less than ambient in the shop.  An example for clarity, say the shop RH is 37%, than the air out of engine will be around 32-34%.  Maybe the 40 gal fish tank air pump I’m using is not big enough and I need more air getting pushed through?  Or the fact that this engine has gaping holes (albeit taped up) in it since it’s not all put together?  Not sure.

I did rewicker the dry air to enter the engine via the oil filler neck and out the crankcase vent vs. the other way around.  Also, I disconnected the out line that was going back into the air pump and instead of a closed system I’m trying a simple dry air in and then wetter air out to shop air.  I’ll assess if this has any impact on reducing the internal moisture in the engine.

I then tried my hand at baking all the pink desiccant I had collected in a small plastic tub.  I put it all on aluminum foil on a baking pan, fired up the oven to 240° F and cooked them for about 1.5 hours.

As you can see (although I guess a before pic would have been a good idea eh?) this baking thing really works and turns the quite pink desiccant crystals back to blue.  It’s hard to capture the brilliant blue with a camera, but it’s a drastic difference.  Pretty cool.

Although I have no doubt that my desiccant efforts is vastly helping keeping my engine internals dry-er, it doesn’t negate the fact that I need to get this engine pickled… and soon!  Thus, weather be damned I’m going back into the shop! (currently in the 30’s and it’s supposed to snow 2 days this week….Ugh! )

I had 2 major issues regarding engine preservation that until this afternoon were unresolvable:  1) I need to be able to cycle through each cylinder to TDC and BDC for spraying preservation oil into the cylinders.  Clearly I can’t do this with the engine dangling by a chain on a hoist. 2) I need to be able to rotate the entire engine upside down to bath the cam in oil/preservation juice.  To solve both these issues –and be able to have the engine on-hand but stored in a smaller form factor– I bought an engine stand from Harbor Freight that will allow me to mount the engine to the stand so that I can handle the 2 issues that I mention above.

This means next steps are to finish (ASAP!) the glassing in the lower engine mount extrusions, get the engine mount bolted in place and then use the engine mount to mount the engine to the stand.  This will allow me to then do all the steps I need to for proper engine storage.  Also, it will allow me to get the engine out of the shop and into my pool hall/rec room/storage so it’s in an a climate controlled area with much less shop dust floating around.

I’ll then finish off mounting the firewall in prep for the canopy build.

I started this phase of the build by going down to a coffee joint and reviewing all my engine extrusion mounting tasks.  I then took a look at some fellow builders’ sites who have finished installing their engine mount extrusions (Dave Berenholtz, Mike Beasley, and Ary Glantz).  I then reviewed the actual build plans.

In real world time, I’ll probably start off with mounting a couple of hell hole items, then finalize my plan and start glassing in the lower extrusions NLT Thursday.

I think in general it takes stressing the electrical system operationally to find various areas of optimization.  Obviously I’m not saying my airplane is at a fully operational state to allow for a real world stress test, but as I get nearer to that goal, and a major of my systems are up and running, there’s simply fewer “stones” to overturn in finding potential issues and fine tuning the electrical system. Through collaboration with other builders and my own armchair flying, I have discovered some key areas of optimization in my electrical system architecture over the last couple of weeks.

Just in the past two weeks –to kick off 2018– was the great “Starter Contactor Relocation” fiasco…. where I think I actually ended up with a much better starting system architecture than what I started with.

Next, in discussing details of Dave Berenholtz’ electrical system with him, it made me go back and take a look at some details of my own system, really in a manner more of “checking something out” just to answer a question he asked.  In assessing my alternator capacities and 3 layered electrical system (main alternator, E-Bus/SD-8 backup, and IBBS) I realized a change that I had made when installing the IBBS into the system –based on some info that Bob from TCW Tech and I discussed at the time– may have been a good thing on the face of it, but a deeper issue was presenting itself.

This made me take an in-depth look at my SD-8, E-Bus and IBBS architecture.  I actually stumbled across something that made me take a second look at how I had modified it from my very original install.  Unfortunately, I didn’t do my due diligence in truly assessing the operational impact/flow in an emergency scenario where I would be required to take the main alternator offline and employ only the SD-8 powered E-Bus.  By having the IBBS on my main bus it essentially made it so I had no pass-thru capability (IBBS will both drive components from connected bus power or provide its own backup battery power) so in an E-Bus only scenario I would be driving single point connected items straight to IBBS power that is my last resort (layer 3: IBBS power)…. in short, meaning only 45 min operating power for those items vs. letting them happily draw power from the SD-8/E-Bus for the duration of the flight.

I called Bob at TCW and we worked through my issue.  The only viable fix to allow these components that are hooked up to ship’s power ONLY through the IBBS’s pass-thru connection (bus power) to draw power via either the pass-thru feature (bus power/layer 2) or IBBS power (layer 3) was that I needed to move the IBBS off the main bus and put it on the E-Bus.  This allowed those IBBS components hooked up to bus power via the IBBS pass-thru feature to then be powered off the SD-8 if I needed to go to layer 2 power, and then eventually to layer 3, IBBS power (~45 min off the IBBS internal battery), as a very last resort.

However, I would then need to take one more step to make it so one of the IBBS’s charging power leads gets disconnected to disable the IBBS from attempting to recharge (2.5A) off the E-Bus when solely on SD-8/E-bus power.  Bob from TCW recommended that I run the IBBS recharge lead through a 5A circuit breaker on the panel, but instead I’m going to employ a relay that will trip automatically once I select the SD-8 as my power source.  Then, when/if the E-bus only scenario ever plays out, in the heat of having just dealt with my main alternator going offline (meaning my having just been subject to haywire readings and troubleshooting to decipher what’s really going on before then deciding to take my main alternator offline… this all of course equals STRESS!) and bringing my SD-8 online as the new primary alternator (main bus offline/E-Bus only power), I don’t have to try to remember to pull that circuit breaker (yes, it would be on the checklist, but I like to automate if/where I can!).  Plus a relay adds considerably less weight and puts that weight in the nose vs more weight on my panel (also, to be honest, a heck of lot cheaper as well!).

All of the above was not without penalty or effort to be certain!  It required a considerable reconfiguration of all of my 3 power bus (main, E-Bus, battery) connections, where I ended up playing musical chairs primarily with my IBBS and Electroair EI power connections.  The big-picture net result was that I moved the IBBS from the main power bus to the E-Bus, and both Electroair power connections from the E-Bus to the battery bus, with the resulting paper trail that ensued.  Of course, not only did I update my power buss tracking sheet, but also as I detail below, every electrical diagram where this info was present.

I then performed an entire review of ALL my wiring diagrams as I updated this latest IBBS /SD-8 circuit change (I added that relay to auto-shutoff the IBBS charging circuit when I go to SD-8 only power on the isolated E-Bus) and all the other little inherent nitnoy changes (wire color, etc.) that I’ve made to make the diagrams match my actual wiring.  The end result was updating and printing out 18 diagrams . . . and even then I had to go back through after I printed a few out and annotate some further changes!  Finally, since I’m in engine install assessment mode, I also annotated all my firewall pass-thru points on my diagrams with either an “H” or an “L” in a big hex outline to depict whether they pass through at the high point or low point pass-thru (I’m thinking the current requirement is only for two firewall wire pass-thrus).

Moving on.

I’d also like to report something that is of minor note to be sure, but a to-do item checked off my list nonetheless: I purchased my fuel flow codes from GRT that allows me to integrate my FT-60 Red Cube fuel flow meter with the GRT EIS4000.  This means that I have one minor non-GRT Hall Effect sensor to purchase to enable a more traditional battery charge/discharge ammeter (only with REAL #’s) at which point all my array of EIS/EFIS feeding sensors will be in hand/configured.

Looking at my firewall components wiring and component placement planning, I then took a bit of time to re-read Section IIL of the plans to glean any good info from it that I could regarding the eventual engine install (a reminder: it’s still below freezing here weather-wise, so I’m still in non-shop work mode).  I was looking at this page (below) and started playing around a bit and ended up graying out all the components on the original firewall diagram that WILL NOT be on mine.  BTW, to be clear there are no “replacement items” for those grayed out below, they are simply removed.  The closest to a swap out you could say is the in/out oil lines for the oil heat system.

One point of note planning wise, is that I relocated the main electrical cable firewall pass-thrus from the lower left corner (looking forward) of the firewall to the lower right, a bit below where the aileron control tube exits the firewall.  This location minimizes/straightens the cable run lengths and keeps my firewall ground, starter, alternator B-lead and F-lead all within about an area around 4″ in diameter.

Also, I understand this is a rather campy, convoluted looking slide below, but it’s essentially just one of my notes’ pages that gives me all the pertinent info I need represented visually. As you can see, essentially I’ve pretty much figured out all my wire runs (initial plan anyway) both in the engine compartment itself and through the firewall.

In prep for the engine coming home to my shop (soon I hope!), I’ve been slowly buying all the parts I need for my engine dehydrator ala Bill Allen’s FaceBook post where he provides details on how to construct one of these things for fairly cheap (see video below).  Here are the components I’ve acquired thus far.  I’m awaiting the humidity sensors (hygrometers) that I ordered and will purchase some desiccant soon as well.  In addition, I also ordered 4 each cylinder dehydrator plugs from ACS.  I figure between an active airflow dehydrator and the cylinder plugs, it should keep the engine internals quite dry enough to prevent galling or corrosion.  Moreover, I don’t want to do a full on oil-soaked pickling of the engine since I really think it will only be unused for less than a year at the very most.

Bill Allen’s engine dehumidifier video:

In addition to my electrical system shenanigans above, I also created a new ground bus “G6” for just the D-Deck/Turtleback area.  It will be a 9-pin D-Sub connector that is connected by two (2x) 18AWG wires that run from the Hell Hole’s G3 ground connector (pictured below).  This will provide me one simple ground point to contend with in the GIB headrest/Turtleback area and will keep me from having to run a fair number of separate ground wires down to the hell hole.

Moreover, I’m removing the firewall “forrest of tabs” ground connector on the firewall side and will use just the bolt since I have only two items on my engine that need ground wire connection points (Electroair coil and PMag).  Below is the original B&C “forrest of tabs” firewall ground busses.  The firewall ground bus identification is G2 while the Hell Hole ground bus identification is G3.

Here’s a shot showing the G2 firewall ground bus.

And the other side of this contraption, the G3 hell hole ground bus (with the terminal for the big yellow ground cable attached for inventory tracking).

As I stated above, since I only have 2 firewall component ground wires to contend with, I’m not putting that busy looking monstrosity back on the firewall to simply take up weight and space when it’s not needed.  Here’s how it will look on the firewall (ok, if my bird were doing a full afterburner climb like an F-15…. ha!)

And one last shot of the G2 firewall ground bolt (by itself now) and the remaining G3 hell hole “forrest of tabs” ground bus.

As I’ve mentioned quite a bit over the past month, it is still pretty darn cold here on the mid-Atlantic coast, so I continue to do all those tasks that I won’t want to expend the time to do when it’s warm… and good glassing weather.  I’ve gone off on a few sideline electrical system design rabbit holes, but all for the greater good in my opinion.  I’m hoping to spend a day early to mid next week to finish up my engine and bring it home.  I’ll also continue to work to knock out these electrical system taskers up to late next week, which I will then again be heading down to NC for a long weekend visit.

Today I put the finishing touches on hopefully what will be the last major revision of my electrical system. Specifically, as I’ve been alluding to over the last week, I’m talking about my starting and charging system…. or perhaps let’s say a focus on the big yellow power cable running down the sidewall.

As I mentioned before, I had done an assessment of the incident involving Brian DeFord’s Cozy IV.  That led me to entertain the idea of placing the Starter contactor on the cold/forward side of the firewall.  Which I then posited the idea of doing so on Bob Nuckolls’ AeroElectric Connection forum –again, Bob, et al, never stated exactly why it SHOULDN’T be done but Bob was clearly not a fan of moving the starter contactor / solenoid off the firewall.  Moreover, I discovered via back channels that a lot of canards are in fact configured with this contactor mounted on the cold side of the firewall.

More on the starter contactor wiring configuration in a bit.

Having just wired the “Starter ON” warning lead that hangs off the Lamar solid state “Superswitch” that I am using for my starting contactor, I realized that I had been remiss all these years in actually ops/function checking this device to see if it was serviceable (obviously I assumed it was good since I bought it new from Aircraft Spruce…. that was years ago and they stopped selling them since probably around early 2012).  But we all know what happens when we assume eh?

Well, there are two distinct features of a SOLID STATE contactor that make it challenging to ops check.  I was aware of the first challenge, which is clearly stated in the nomenclature of this device: “Solid State” … otherwise better characterized as NO moving parts.  Unlike the definitive “click” of a mechanical relay, or the “clunk” of a large relay/contactor/solenoid, this guy is quiet (also, for the record, much more “electrical quiet” when it comes to (not) generating unwanted noise).  Clearly you simply can’t actuate and listen for a good ops function.

The second challenge was one that I wasn’t aware of until I was researching how overcome challenge #1.  Apparently you can’t function a solid state relay unless the primary power connectors that carry a load are connected to power, since it “steals” some of this power to actuate the switching function.  I tried it with an LED/470 Ohm resistor combo connected to both a 9v, then 12v, battery…. nothing.

Uh-oh, had my failure to do all this early on soon after I received shipment of this device cost me a pretty penny?!  (This cost about 3-4 times as much as a “standard” B&C starter contactor).  I contacted Lamar, knowing that this item had been out production for quite some time.

As often is the case, an aircraft manufacturer will use a specific part, here it was Lancair using this Superswitch for their Columbia Aircraft (and possibly other Lancair designs).  I’m guessing that the most likely scenario is that when the Division of Lancair building the Columbia sold the line to Cessna to be reintroduced as the Corvalis, this specific part was no longer part of Cessna’s electrical system design so the inventory was left to die on the vine, dwindling its way into near-extinction, although reports from those who have used this contactor are normally overwhelmingly positive (I’m clearly extrapolating here on the “what happened” scenario, since I’ve experienced this same type of thing on a couple other aircraft parts ACS sold which then vanished from existence once ACS’s inventory sold out).

I spoke with Jim at Lamar who stated that not only does there have to be a load sensed on the primary switched power connectors (the big lugs), but that the current needed to be over an amp.  While I was looking for something that would require an amp to drive it, Jim stated to simply hook up the leads of a 12V battery to the posts, and that the Superswitch itself would serve as the load.  Ok, good to go.  He seemed rather uninterested in dealing with an obscure, obsolete part that they had produced probably well over a decade ago, so he excused himself off the phone.

Then it hit me . . . how will I know if it works or not since I will have no indication once the control switch is activated that the large terminal switches have closed? (back to challenge #1, this thing is SILENT!).  Ahh, I’ll do something that I rarely do with my Fluke multimeter, I’ll use it as an ammeter!

Well, with my thinking I didn’t want to blow up my Fluke, once I connected my test leads in series into the power circuit on the main terminals (again, just using a 12V battery), I set the ammeter function on the 10 Amp range.  I then added 12V power to the Superswitch’s control (coil) leads. Nothing.  Hmmm, ok . . .  I then set the ammeter on the 400 mA range and again added power to the Superswitch’s control leads, upon which I got the very slightest of jump in amperage showing up on the Fluke.  I tried it a number of times, all with repeatable and consistent readings. Hmmm… I still knew not a lot and I wasn’t sure what the data was telling me.

I emailed the results of my little test to Jim, who immediately emailed back that my ops check was in fact successful and the unit appeared to be working fine.  Wow, probably the most anti-climactic ops function test I’ve ever performed on a piece of equipment! But, I was happy to confirm that it is working.

Check that off the list.

Ok, back to both the new mounting location and wiring schema of my freshly ops tested Lamar starter contactor.

I noted that there had been a lot of chatter from both Canardians and tractor bubbas about my “moving the starter contactor” proposal.  Bob and tractor guys were not very welcome to the idea, while I again found out that a TON of canards are configured with the starter contactor on the cold side of the firewall.

First off, in a very un-theatrical or suspenseful way, I will simply state that I am NOT moving my starter contactor to the cold side of the firewall.  So this new design below that I discussed a couple of posts back is OUT… persona non-gratis!

Why?  Well, read on . . .

One builder/flier, specifically, sent me an email that while his proposed starting circuit design interested me, I admittedly didn’t place it on my list of viable options since my goal was to simply the move the starter contactor off the hot side of the firewall and into the Hell Hole. This builder, Steve Stearns, shared with me that he simply went against the conventional wisdom of Bob Nuckolls’ Aeroelectric Connection Z-13/8 architecture, that has the starter and alternator B lead sharing the big positive power cable running down the Long-EZ fuselage.  Bob’s laudable goal in his dual use design was of course to save weight, and I’ll posit based on the convention that we simply place starter contactors on the firewall, because that’s where they belong. 

What Steve had done was separate those 2 cables back out into their respective functions so that the big cable handled the starting and another 8 AWG cable was added back into the mix specifically to serve as the alternator’s B lead (okay, my aversion to adding A) a thing and B) weight, kicked in and although <clearly> I assessed Steve’s new proposed architecture, I’ll admit honestly that my paradigms were quite in play!).

To take it one step further, Steve proposed moving the starter contactor off the firewall, just as I was looking to do, but not to the Hell Hole …. oh, no . . . go big or go home here folks: Steve’s crazy notion was to move the damn thing ALL THE WAY UP TO THE NOSE! (Whaaa…?!??!?!)  What this does is simple: it removes the big long fat high current cable that is always hot when the master switch is ON so that the segment of “exposed” always hot cable is literally 6 inches long, not 10 feet long. Hmmmm….

But add another wire?  I dunno… sounds too against the grain. I mean the “massive” amount of weight and all.  But 8 AWG?  “Well, how much does that weigh?” I asked myself out of curiosity.  So I weighed 4 feet of 8 AWG wire, and it came in at almost exactly a quarter of a pound.  4 oz?!  “Ok, how much would I need?” I again asked myself.  So I went to the fuselage and measured just a little shy of 11 feet. But, let’s make it EZ and round that figure up to 12.  So, 0.75 lb is the net increase in weight.  Hmmm, really?  My paradigm was for a big 2-4 AWG welding cable, which as we all know is HEAVY.  But, 8 AWG Tefzel comparatively is obviously much less hefty.

Hmmm?

Then there was the weight of the stuff that would inherently get moved forward in this design . . .  much farther forward!  Ok, so I would move the Starter Contactor and its associated “Starter On” warning lead, and the ANL 40A fuse link (which needs to be on the distant end from the alternator) up to the nose battery compartment.  “Well, how much do all those weigh?” I again ask myself . . . 0.764 lb.

Ok, let’s recap:

• “Always hot” cable reduced from ~10 feet to ~6 inches (buried in the nose)
• Starter gets dedicated 4 AWG circuit (actually 4-CCA, so more like ~3 AWG)
• Alternator gets dedicated 8 AWG B lead, no sharing or exposed to starting current
• Less than 3/4 pound net weight added (~1 ft aft of CG, the rest forward of CG)
• Around 3/4 pound moved off firewall and up to nose (nearly farthest point forward)

The more I deconstructed this architecture and actually looked at the real numbers, the more and more I really liked it.  I spent a couple days researching and talking to some very smart electrical engineer types with aviation background, and none of them found any negative aspects to this design.  My overarching concern, intuitively, was having the starter contactor so far removed from the starter.  However, cognitively, and backed by the data I found and discussions I had, was that the starter contactor is really just a big switch allowing current to flow from Battery >> Master Contactor >> to Starter…. so there didn’t seem to be anything other than convention proving to be a roadblock to this working.

First off, here’s a more refined diagram depicting my initial chicken-scratchings on how all this is situated.

Secondly, I pulled the trigger on this design.  I ordered a few more cable terminals and 12 feet more of 8 AWG wire that will enable me to incorporate this new starting and electrical system charging architecture into my Long-EZ.  With the actual added weight most likely around 0.6 lb, and 80-90% of it all situated forward of the CG, as well as cleaning up respective starter and alternator B lead circuits so A goes to A and B goes to B, I am excited that this is a very clean and optimized design with little added weight.  In addition it really cleans up the firewall, and the Hell Hole, and is much more refined of an architecture for just a slight weight penalty.

I like it!

I would like to say a special thanks to Steve Stearns for taking the time to communicate and share this design with me (thanks Steve!).

I should also note that with such a significant design change, it took me well over 3 hours tonight to update the 2 main electrical diagrams I have that depict this architecture.  I do still have to update my master architecture wiring diagram, but that will in effect, require a whole new redesign of the diagram… but I will try to knock it out during this still-preset long cold-weather spell.

In other news, I talked to my engine builder and not only are the parts in, but they’ve already mounted most of them.  Within the next week I hope to get on their schedule to finalize some of the component installs and get that IOX-340S engine in my shop where it belongs!

Now, back to the exciting world of clearing up the electrical system tasks on my list….