My Christmas present to myself this year was the B&C SD-8 back-up alternator that I’ll be using in Bob Nuckolls’ Z-13/8 electrical system design.

The SD-8 is mounted on the engine’s vacuum pump pad and is used as the primary source of power for the endurance bus in a two-layered electrical system, if the main alternator should fail.

I forgot to add a picture of my (new & improved) Starter Contactor.  After a fair amount of research, and talking to some very smart electrical dudes, I’ll be using the Lamar SuperSwitch Solid State Contactor for my starter contactor.  From what I understand, these contactors were originally made for the Lancair Columbia aircraft and were apparently made in a decent quantity so that when Cessna bought the Columbia from Lancair, they swapped out the starter contactors and Lamar had a ton left over.  So Lamar basically just dumped the remaining contactors for comparatively nothing on Aircraft Spruce.  I didn’t take a pic of mine, but this is what it looks like.  BTW, I don’t think the P/N in the pic is good any more since I believe ACS sold out their stock of these contactors.

The reason behind moving to solid state is that it has no mechanical moving parts, and is significantly more efficient than traditional starter contactors at a fraction (1/3) of the weight.