Author Archives: Michael

Time: 1 Hour

At the bottom of the engine is the Superior cold air sump. This is where the air that comes in from the air filter/servo gets divided up and sent to the individual cylinders. During engine shutdown there can be a very slight chance that unburnt fuel travels back down into the sump. AeroSport power said this is very rare in a fuel injected engine but still recommended the sniffle valve. The valve is a mechanical means to drain any fuel out of the bottom of the sump. The valve is heat activated, or the lack there of as heat actually closes the valve and when it cools it opens allowing any fuel to drain. I was pretty straight forward installing the valve and I just needed to extend the line so that it would exit past the lower engine cowl onto the ground. I used some MIL-6000 hose to give it the bend and flexibility and secured the other end with a clamp to the engine exhaust bracket. I’ll replace the clamp with a high temp one after I get it from Aircraft Spruce. I think I will also put some eat shields on the exhaust where it’s close to the hose.

Time: 2 Hours

I needed to run the oil breather tube from my inverted oil separator tank to the bottom of the engine area. Normally with the stock setup it would run from the top/back of the engine case. This tube is required to release high case pressures and allow any excess pressure and/or oil to be expelled overboard. Van’s stock setup comes with a pre-bent tube and hose attachment. Since I went custom I needed to create my own. Not a big deal and I just needed to determine the angles to follow the path I planned. I also needed to get it close to the engine mount so I could secure it and direct the tube just over a section of the exhaust pipes. This allows any oil that is expelled to be burnt off and only create smoke. That’s the idea however I have read that a lot of the oil doesn’t get burnt off and ends up on the belly of the plane for you to clean up. Hopefully the inverted oil system and the separator help prevent this from happening. Here is how mine turned out. I cut the end at a slight angle pointing forward. This is a theory that it creates positive pressure in the tube to help prevent oil from being sucked out if it were angled the opposite way creating a venturi effect. It is very secure once I tightened it at the separator and clamped it above the exhaust. It is clear of all the other hoses except the heater hose. With the bends I made it’s away from the firewall by a 1/4″. I used Aircraft Spruce’s Versatube for this project which wasn’t too terrible to bend and shape using the spring bending tool.

Time: 2 Hours

Another firewall forward wiring task was to finish up the E-Mag runs. This is my engines ignition source. In traditional Lycoming engines they use magnetos to provide the ignition source. The E-Mags use newer technology to control very precisely when the spark is delivered in reference to pistons compression stroke. Another benefit is they have their own internal alternator that provides power for the spark even if all ships power is lost. For these reasons I went with this setup. There are only four wires needed to go to each E-Mag, a 12 volt source, a ground, a p-lead and a digital tach reading. The 12 volt, tach and p-lead I had run a while ago so I just needed to add a ground to the mix. I made the appropriate extensions to the wires and figured the best path to run the wires to the E-Mags. They have a connector that plugs into the back and you just have to screw each of the wires to the connector. The 12 volt source provides power under normal operations, the ground provides normal ground and the tach will give me an RPM reading. The forth wire is the p-lead for testing the function of the E-Mag using a switch in the cockpit. In normal operations the power is providing spark using the ground of the engine with the p-lead switch(I labeled it ignition) in the on position. When you put it in the off position you are grounding the p-lead and denying the E-mag from creating spark which only allows half of the spark plugs to operate making the engine run rough and providing a positive test that the E-Mag is working when the ground is removed. The last test for the E-Mag will be to remove the 12 volt power to make sure the internal alternator operates. I will do this by turning the circuit breaker off on my Dynon screen. After running all the wires I secured them and plugged in the connector. If I did them all correctly when I put power on I should see a red LED followed by a green LED. My luck was good and that’s just what happened!

Time: 2 Hours

I have had the smoke system installed for some time now and is located in the aft cargo area. All the wiring and plumbing was finished all the way to the firewall where it ended in a T fitting. From this T fitting the smoke oil splits into two lines that run to two of the exhaust pipes. Now was a good time to locate and install the spray nozzles and their associated lines to the T fitting. Just like the EGT probes you need to do some measuring and figure out the best spot for your given setup. Once I was happy with where I wanted to placed them I marked and drilled the required 3/8″ hole. Then it was just a matter of running the line and securing it from the T to the exhaust pipe. The spray nozzle is welded to a metal flange that gets secured with two clamps. As a back up the instructions have you safety wire the nozzle as well. I left plenty of slack to account for engine vibration. One more firewall forward task done. The tasks are slowly disappearing!