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How to fill unused firewall holes + install eyeballs?

sritchie

Well Known Member
Hey all,

Since drilling the holes for my mixture, prop and throttle cables in my RV10 firewall according to plans, I've made two decisions that make me regret the drilling:

  1. I decided to go with the EFII system, which doesn't require a mixture cable
  2. I now want to use stainless eyeballs for the cable passthroughs.

I've now got three holes right next to each other, one of which needs to be filled and two of which need eyeballs. My questions are, how should I fill the unused hole (I'm guessing the center) in a way that will let me use the existing left and right holes? Or are the stock holes just too close, and do I need to relocate everything and redrill?

Based on this picture it looks like azcloudflyer ran into the same issue but didn't fill the middle hole:

IMG_0162.jpg


Thanks!
 
Patch

I would patch the entire area with piece of stainless and drill new holes. You can make it look good. I powder coated by cover plate red. Turned out nice.
 
that makes sense and feels like the right thing to do. Would you recommend patching it and trying to reuse the two outer holes, or going somewhere completely different? I feel like reusing the two is going to be better, keeping the number of holes to a minimum.
 
I think he was telling you to put a patch plate in to cover all the existing holes and then drill two holes in the patch for the cables you need. I'd just cut a rectangular area out around the existing holes and then rivet a stainless steel patch back in place. I did something similar because the pre-punched pass-through holes for the electrical wiring was too close to the engine mount for my cannon plugs, so I just riveted a rectangular patch over both of them and put my pass-through plugs where I wanted. I also used proseal with the patches to keep engine smells out of the cockpit.
 
How about a trimmed fender washer on both sides of the FW hole with a bolt through the center to clamp it shut. Makes it look more natural instead of a patch and no holes to drill.
 
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