55wagon wrote:Bad influences cost ya money rob.

There's a lot of that on here

I would make a suggestion on your panel. Don't paint it, powder coat it. I have had really poor luck with painted panels around the screws, it tends to flake, or pop from the screw pressure. Powder coating tend to be more durable when you have to attach-reattach it. Downside is far fewer colors available. Personally I went with a medium dark grey 60% subdued. Greys are easy to mark with most other colors and provide good contrast and less eye strain. Military kind of figured that out a couple of decades ago. Boeing started using a grayish tan in some of the 80's vintage 7 series. Grey tends to persist on most biz-jets. Besides, I could never pick a color that would, in the words of the Dude, tie the room together. The other issue with paint is not making it shiny. Subduing modern paints is a pain. You had to add this glop, essentially chalk, to immeron, almost 50/50. with other systems you have to diddle with the reactants, , or use catalyzed base coats, which I suspect is what makes it less durable. You really don't want it shiny.

I finally finished out my interior a few weeks ago. I had a poor headliner experience. I ordered one from Airtex, nicely made, reasonably priced. So I start putting it in, really fun when you get to the BAS harness retractors and the skylites. I work my way forward only to find there was not enough material side to side in the last 8" of the ceiling! So after a couple of calls to Airtex, we finally figured out what happened. They mixed up the pattern set for the 185 with skylites and a 180! They sent me a new one, with was substantially more material in the front. Enough material to essentially cover a zeppelin, with a bit to spare. To their credit, Airtex backed up its product and came through, just took some time.

During the interim, I played some more with the Avionics, changing the GTX330 to an ES model (Garmin has an upgrade program at the moment) and putting in the ADS-B wiring. I added a discrete GDL-39 (hidden on the side of the glovebox). If you have an ES transponder the FAA rewards you by transmitting mode A, C and S traffic to you. Otherwise you only get other ADS-B traffic. You can get it parasitically, by being close to an ES equipped aircraft, but as soon as they move out of the bubble, you lose it. I also had kind of a credit with Aspen (some spare ADC's after installs) and they are giving out rebates, so I put in a Synthetic Vision upgrade, as it was almost free with all the junk and rebate credit. Very high novelty value.

So all is done, time to fly. Take the bird to the bath as it is dusty. Whilst washing it down I notice hydraulic fluid on the wheel. Leaking brakes. So now awaiting new o-rings to get her in a day or so. I gotta go fly. Need to check out the new gizmos. Hopefully the winds will start to abate a bit up here. Excellent kite flying though.

I would strongly second the idea of powder coating your panel. Paint isn't that durable, and over time a lot of screws get removed, replaced, etc.

MTV

Believe it or not, those are all powder coat colors, and that is what I'm doing, all the markings and placarding will be silk screened. I too am thinking a light shade of gray, with charcoal lettering.

Dogpilot, I cringed when you originally talked about putting in the headliner around skylights. Wow, no idea how you pulled that off, be sure and give us some pictures. Oh and I want to see your zeppelin too! With all the planes you've got I shouldn't be surprised you have one of those. Boy that is a LOT of headliner material.

Wish I had some credit with Aspen. or Garmin.

I love my zeppelin, but it just won't fit all the way in the hanger. Every time you turn around it just drifts off. So embarrassing, "dogpilot, this is the tower at Prescott, your zeppelin is nosing around here again."

You can see from the first pic how little material there was, in contrast to the second edition. The skylites make you end up with some pleats at the corners. They look better now, I made tighter pleating.

If I was industrious, I would make a panel out of Kydex for the ceiling around the skylites. Perhaps next winter. I got an excellent suggestion to make the area directly above the door frame into a glovebox, lots of space. We used to have a burrito heater there in the E2, as a bleed air line went above the door. So the airframe guys made a box to surround it. Pop a frozen burrito in and presto, 5-10 minutes later you had farting pleasure. I suppose a box could hang under the muffler and you could cook a brisket on the way out to the field.

I was poking about my pic files, where I had the headliner pics and found the powder coat chart. The sample is just a shade lighter than I used. I used the P004-GR9 60% gloss (second row, third one). It actually corresponds to a color in Rustoleam called 'stone.'


How it looks on the panel:

Since I've had my 185 the elevator trim wheel has had about 8 clicks of play before it actually affected the trim. Made trimming for level, hands off flight kinda tricky because I was never certain if I was just adjusting within the play, or actually adjusting the trim. Yesterday I finally decided to dig into the problem, and I'm glad I did.

There are a total of four tension (split) pins that are part of the elevator trim wheel mechanism. One of them "pins" the wheel itself to the shaft it revolves on. The pin was there, and it was safety wired, but I could see the wheel moved without actually moving the shaft. I "assumed" the hole through the shaft was wallowed out so I took a punch to drive the tension pin in a bit further to see if that helped. The safety wire broke and half of the tension pin fell into the netherworld of the belly.

I pulled the remaining half of the pin and dropped in a 3/32" punch.



That removed all but one click of play. Yesterday evening, in the HomeDepot parking lot, an illicit deal went down. My mechanic gave me four 3/32" tension pins. This morning I installed the pin and there are now no clicks of slop.



On the opposite side of this wheel is another 3/32" tension pin that "pins" the chain sprocket to the shaft, another point of trim failure. That gets replaced next before it breaks.

Phil, good call. Mine was the same when I bought it, the pin in 3 pieces held together with safety wire. I had to replace the shaft as well, as it was wallowed out. My first 185 had the pin to the wheel break on me in flight. Not exactly a pleasure to land trimmed in cruise position. Upon investigation, it was not a roll pin, but rather a finishing nail in its place.

BTW, the shaft only costs a little less than a camera system, around $300 as I recall.

Thanks to StewartB I was able to find something else to do on my wagon (not that I'm done with the interior, just delayed on the panels till I'm back from fishing). Cowl louvers. This is my first summer with her, and here in Texas that means either 98 degrees and 98% humidity, or 102+ degrees and 30% humidity, except where Skalywag lives where its 190 degrees and 1% humidity.

Anyway, all this heat has forced me to fly with my cowl flaps wide open if I'm running hard. I saw StewartB's post on the wagon owners board, found out where he bought his louvers (Skywagon City), ordered me a set, and got the STC from the Skywagon club who owns it.





The claim is they will knock 20 degrees of the CHT.

Prep (for me) began by tracing the opening on a friends 182 that has cowl louvers. I then confirmed they were the same dimensions as mine. This probably wasn't really necessary but I was about to cut rather large holes in a $14,000 part - it made me feel better.

So this morning I flew down to my friend and Stearman mechanic's strip and begun the install. (Hey 55wagon, I stopped well short of the taxiway and had to add power to make it. Now Robbie is really freakin)

We started on the right side (like to do something I've never done before on the side I won't have to look at every time I fly), marking the cowling based on the template I'd made. Then we cut the first hole. Proud of our work we grabbed the louver and a sickening feeling came over us. Had we placed the template on upside down and cut the hole backwards? It sure looked like it. I took full blame cause it was my template and I'd placed it. We pondered what to do and finally figured that if we placed the louver on correctly, and recut the hole, we could build two filler pieces. We marked the new layout, marked the filler pieces and were about to start cutting again.

But I just knew I had done the template correct, and placed it correctly. I just knew it. Heck I'd measured everything at least six times. Then it dawned on us both at about the same time. We had placed the louver and both were thinking about the louver scooping air in, which of course is wrong, it directs air out. A picture StewartB had sent me confirmed we did it right. We were okay. We had cut it correctly. But boy we came within a hillbilly's heart beat of really screwing up.

Anyway we placed the louver on the outside of the cowling, drilled the holes, then moved the louver to the inside of the cowling and commenced riveting.





A couple of hours later and it was time to head back home and test these to see if they really drop the CHT by 20 degrees.

I lifted off the 65' msl strip and headed for 10,500. Throttle to the panel, prop to 2,700 rpm and 110mph climb. As I passed 6,500 I pulled the prop back to 2,550 and started leaning the mixture to just rich of max power. The CHT stayed steady a 375 all the way. Very cool (pun intended). Before, and a climb like this would go immediately to 395 and end up around 405.

All that's left is to paint the rivets.

Thanks Stewart.

Louvers look great!!!

Barnstormer wrote:

and here in Texas that means either 98 degrees and 98% humidity, or 102+ degrees and 30% humidity, except where Skalywag lives where its 190 degrees and 1% humidity.

Yeah its pretty rough out here, last 2 weeks had highs of 65-75 degrees with lows in the 50s

Now ur making me cry. My kinda weather!

Last major project is underway.



BTW, I'm extremely disappointed in the company I chose to build the new panels. After months of back and forth, and hundreds of dollars in shipping costs and thousands of dollars in design/build cost, the raw metal panels they sent me still aren't right. I'm giving up on them and trying a new a mix of companies here in Texas. One that will create the cad drawing and one that will water jet the new panels, do the powder coating and silk screening.

All I can say is I feel your pain. Took me over 5 long months for my vendor to get me final panels. Was a really frustrating process. My advice is no matter what the frustrations, just try to keep a level head and get it right regardless of how much BS is tossed at you. In the end, its worth it.

Good luck!

I can see the light at the end of the tunnel. Just got the pvc test panels today. My mechanic and I will triple check everything tonight and we should only be a couple of weeks from having her flying again.

Looks great! You must be relieved...

What are you putting in center on the pilot side? Interesting layout.

Sounds like your a bit optimistic and I hope you can get her going that quick. Me, I have over 125 hrs in panel wiring alone and Im still not done. But then again, I replaced every single wire in the entire airplane along with the entire vac and pitot/static system. I so want to fly her.

Keep up the good work man. Im right there with you!

Thanks for the good words.

The idea of taking this project local ended up being a big bust. 2 1/2 weeks of waiting for the new cad drawings with promises every day. I fired them and went back with the original company I'd been working with for four months (fortunately I hadn't burned that bridge).

The original layout for the new pilots panel had the 6 pack of primary gauges in a traditional layout. But when we tried to implement it we found the yoke brace went too high to allow it, and we couldn't raise the gauges high enough to clear it without running into the upper panel brace. I thought through a number of alternate designs and decided on the one you see. The two smaller gauges in the center are the CO Guardian on top, and vacuum below.

Initially I was a bit disappointed but the layout has grown on me, perhaps me just justifying it to myself, but here is how I'm now seeing it.

99% of my flying is/will be VFR. More and more of it backcountry. Before I had the CO and Vac down below, where they were really out of a regular scan.

With the CO prominent it will always be part of the scan. But it also has clocks and timers, a perfect place when doing timed turns. And the gauge, among still other features, also displays density altitude. It's new location will remind me to check the DA when in the backcountry.

The vac gauge I always forgot to look at, and probably would have during IFR flights as well. Now it is right in the scan as well.

I'm so excited to see your finished bird. She will be the one all other restorations aspire to. Awesome work.

Interesting. I was able to squeeze the 6 pack in but it is so f-ing close there isnt a CH on either side to play with. I also had to drop the AS and TB just a smidge to follow the radius. Cant really tell. (photos in my "Madness" thread.") The Guardian is a good unit. I added the CO2, but it is a remote unit that sits back on a custom mount behind the 796 stuffed in with the VHF splitters etc... It is coupled with the MVP-50 and uses the MVPs warning lights. I wanted to keep the panel as clean as possible so things were hidden as much as possible.

Panels are cool as they are one of the many places an owner can express a bit of individuality. It sure does take a ton of thinking things out ahead of time. I cant wait to see all these Skywagons in one place next summer!

Keep on keeping. Flying soon enough...

Just got this photo from the company doing my panels. I'll have the panels on Wednesday and we'll start the install on Thursday.

Very nice and clean! I can't wait to see it all finished.

Hey those louvers look good Barnstormer. Mind if I ask where you got them?
I'm expecting to need some, but waiting to see what CHTs we get first.