Time: 2 Hours
Before I moved on to the wheels I wanted to finish one last electrical task and that was to run the power and ground wires for the pilot and passenger seat heat. Classic Aero Designs was nice to enough to send me the wiring harnesses for both seats including the switches so that I could pre-wire them prior to ordering my seats. If you remember I decided not to run the seat heat through the Vertical Power VP-X as the draw fluctuates too much and could cause issues. So I’m using a fuse block specifically for these two seats and that’s where I ran my red power lines from to the general area where the seats will be along with two black ground wires from my ground block.
I then had to tweet the hole for the pilot switch a little to get a good fit and installed the switch. The passenger switch will get installed later in the panel that will house the control stick and eyeball vent.
So I believe that I’m done running wires from the fuselage up through the gear towers to the instrument panel. That means I can now rivet the floors in whenever I want and rivet the top skin I place as well. I think I will hold off on those tasks for a while just to make sure, you never know!
HI Michael – Thanks for your builder log and YouTube videos. Could you please refresh my memory on why seat heats might cause issues with VP-X? I have VP-X Pro. I have pilot seat heat running off a 10A circuit and passenger seat heat uses a VP-X 5A circuit which drives a relay with an inline fuse from buss. Thanks in advance.
Warm regards,
Drum
Hi Drum,
It’s been a while but from what I remember Chad recommended to run them separate due to the large fluctuations in power draw and the wide variation of amps needed. It seemed like the heaters don’t always draw the same amps and often exceed what is posted on an irregular basis. They don’t just stay on like a light would, they fluctuate and do so in a varied pattern I guess. So that cause the VP-X some issues. Others like you have ran them through the VP-X and seem to be fine or at least I haven’t heard of any issues. So I took his advise and ran them separate. Reach out to Chad via email and he will respond very quickly. Maybe they don’t worry about the heaters anymore!
Regards,
Michael