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RV-6 VH-SOL Mark Newton

newt

Well Known Member
I bought this airplane from its second owner ten years ago.

By GA standards, it's been a cheap couple of seats. It's been reliable, maintenance has been painless, and an RV grin every weekend is a lot cheaper than therapy :)

VH-SOL_in_flight_small.JPG


But it's more than 25 years old and 2000 hours now, and I've owned it for ten years and 1000 hours. I'm not just an owner, I'm a custodian for the next owner. Time for a refurb.

My goals were safety, reliability and maintainability, in that order. I think I hit the mark on all of them.

The Engine

VH-SOL's engine is (was) an O-320-D2A.

It's the 21st century, and carburettor icing shouldn't be a flight risk anymore, so I didn't want to re-fit it to the aircraft without fuel injection. A Precision Airmotive EX320-2 FCU kit (includes flow divider and lines) was acquired.

I also didn't have a huge desire for an ignition system designed in 1905, so I selected P-Mags. For risk amelioration I wanted them from separate manufacturing batches, so I bought them both separately several months apart.

I bulk-stripped the engine myself in the Riverina Airmotive workshop in Parafield, South Australia, in mid February 2021. The crank went off to Aircraft Specialties in Tulsa for machining to M003, the cylinders (which only had a thousand hours on them) were reconditioned, new camshaft, new oil pump, high pressure fuel pump. One of the rods showed up with a manufacturing defect when it was NDT'ed, so that got replaced.

pre-strip.jpg


Riverina Airmotive rebuilt the engine and sent it back to me in late May, zero time and good to go.

new-engine.jpg


The Avionics

Over my years of ownership, I'd progressively improved what I started with. The panel had two Garmin G5's with a GMU11 in the starboard wing, an MGL INFO-1 g-meter, a Garmin GNS430W, a Garmin GMA340 audio panel, a GAD29 to connect the GNS to the G5 system, a TruTrak 385 autopilot, and a Trig TT21 ADS-B-Out transponder.

It also had a UHF transceiver connected to COM3 on the GMA340 via a CRI-1 "commercial radio interface," and a lighting bus.

Here's what it looked like on the last flight before it all ended up in a pile on the hangar floor:

last-old-panel.jpg


The replacement consisted of a Garmin G3X Touch system. One of the G5's was repurposed as a backup flight instrument. ADHARS and EIS systems were added. GDU460 and GDU470 PFD and MFD displays were provisioned. The GAD29, GMU11, GNS430W and GMA340 were retained. A GDL50R was acquired for ADS-B-In. New Garmin pitch and roll servos and an autopilot controller panel. The Trig TT21 and lighting bus were kept, but repurposed. A GTR20 remote-mount VHF was installed as COM1 (the GNS430W is COM2).

I did system design throughout late 2020 and early 2021, paying particular attention to redundancy and failure modes. An auxiliary power bus was designed into it, which keeps the PFD, EIS and ADHARS running for more than an hour following complete failure of the aircraft's main bus.

The installation was mostly performed by Lyndon Tretheway at Custom Aircraft Centre at YGWA in South Australia, with me doing the odd splice, handing over tools, assisting with design direction or wiring pin assignments, or annoying him with idle chit-chat. I think he gave me odd jobs to do to get me out of the way :)

Lyndon fabricated a new panel, using the old one as a cutting template and a component donor.

new-panel-skeleton.jpg


The old one was removed, with copious wiring strippped-out and discarded. The retained wiring was substantially tidied up.

big-mess.jpg


A patch and stiffener was fabricated to fill-in almost all of the penetrations through the subpanel, substantially improving it.

Circuit protection was rebuilt from scratch, using klixon 7277 circuit breakers in a breaker field on the starboard side of the panel, all properly loomed and laced with main bus, avionics bus and auxiliary bus.

busses.jpg


Cable looms to all the instrumentation are easily accessible with service loops for maintenance.

trial-fit.jpg


.../continued
 
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First power-up was a nail-biting experience which became anticlimactic because, incredibly, everything worked first time. A couple of sensors were off-by-one pin, but other than that the whole system booted up without issue, zero canbus errors. It just ... worked.

ground.jpg


.../continued
 
Engine reinstallation

The FAB needed reconstructing due to the dimensional change between the carb and the FCU.

New fuel lines were fabricated.

A high pressure electric pump and filter were procured from Vans. The pump is mounted to the spar on the pilot side, the filter is on the port side of the cockpit where the Facet fuel pump used to be. An Andair gascolator/filter is on the firewall. The FT-60 "red cube" is installed using the same mounting hardware as the Electronics International fuel flow transducer it replaces.

100% of the engine wiring was removed and rebuilt better. New wiring for EGT and CHT sensors, dual P-Mags. Pointless splices that'd accumulated over the course of 25 years were removed. Wiring was properly secured, proper aircraft-grade connectors and terminations were used throughout.

Because everything was rebuilt and rationalized with maintainability in mind, there's now a lot more space behind the engine for (eg) removing fuel filters. My first oil change after return-to-service was accomplished without spilling a drop :) It really is a surprisingly pleasing result.

engine.jpg


Newly rebuilt FAB:

fab.jpg


All credit to Vetteman, btw: That exhaust was installed in 2007, and the slip joints still slip! Incredible :)

First engine run: It started on the second blade and ran smoothly. I couldn't be happier.

https://youtu.be/5Ec_PSq4AHM

Interior

The seats were getting tired and starting to look ratty. Not exactly a wonderful first impression for an inspired RV-grin inductee.

seats-before.jpg


I ordered a new interior from Classic Aero in December. The color scheme is a grey base to draw on its history, with blue and red highlights to match the airplane's paint. Sportsman seats, upholstered in Ultraleather.

It arrived in June, just in time for Sydney's COVID-lockdown :)

Glenn Bridgland helped me install it in October, and the result is frankly amazing:

new-seats.jpg


There's also a tonneau cover which I haven't installed yet. Waiting for a bad-weather weekend when I'd rather not be flying.

Because I've been planning for this for a long time, I installed new Hooker harnesses, stick boots, a pilot-side stick grip and an instrument panel cover two years ago.

Loose Ends

The second P-Mag hasn't been installed yet. It's sitting in a box in the back of my car, waiting. All the cabling is already waiting for it, it should just be a matter of bolting it on and plugging it in.

Exterior paint needs touch-ups. It had a respray in 2007 (which means it has more layers of paint than a sane person would want to carry around anyway), but has accumulated a decade and a half of stone-chips and UV fading. Nothing serious, just something on the to-do list which needs doing.

Other than that, it's basically finished.

.../continued
 
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Post-upgrade impressions

With lockdown over, back to flying.
https://youtu.be/EBRQhg9LDDA

I'm fully aware that because this project started in February, then Sydney entered a 3-month COVID-lockdown a week after return-to-service, I've only accumulated 8 hours flying time in 9 months.

So I have a degree of rustiness, with new systems, new engine, and new SOPs to develop.

Unsurprisingly, I've planned to take it slow.

Having said that, last Sunday I put 3.7 hours on it, and I feel like I'm starting to settle in to it.

The Garmin G3X system is brilliant, exceeds my expectations. Its intuitiveness takes a surprising amount of workload off the table, and its capabilities are greater than anything I've ever flown behind. It's even added new functionality to my old instrumentation! (the GNS430W never told me about winds aloft before, but now it reports crosswind strength and direction because the G3X is feeding it the right data. Brilliant)

Proper engine monitoring is a godsend too. I diagnosed an engine fault on the weekend (cyl#1 was running hotter EGTs during takeoff and colder EGTs when leaned-up for cruise; The hypothesis that fit the data was that cyl#1 was running leaner than it should, so it was too lean at takeoff and LOP in cruise, which is what you'd expect if an injector was partially blocked. Blowing out the restrictor with compressed air made it all good again)

I thought I had a signal strength issue with the new GTR20 VHF COM, but it turned out that the antenna cable built 20 years ago had a bad BNC connector on it which never showed up on the Microair M760 it used to be attached to, and cutting that off and replacing it with a new one made everything good.

It really feels like a new airplane, and I'm enjoying learning about it.

And I'm trying not to think of the bill :D

- mark
 
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Nice!

Mark,

It is like you have a new -6. What you did is beyond a freshen up. :)

Will you please post photos of your fuel pump mounting along the spar? I see where you put the filter.

Well done.
 
This pic is during construction, so it's a bit ratty. Shows the general arrangement. I don't think I have one from a better angle, but I can always take another if there's something specific you want to see.

It essentially picked-up the outflow from the existing Andair fuel valve. Needed minimal modification; I think we cut and put a new AN fitting on the hardline that used to feed the Facet pump, and made a new hardline to connect the pump exhaust to the input side of the filter. The filter's outflow picks up the existing line.

fuel-pump.jpg


Lyndon and I scratched our heads for ages in trepidation about the fuel system modification, but it ended up only taking a few hours. It didn't deserve anywhere near as much stress as I put into it before we started :)

The pump/bypass is pretty much invisible unless you crane your neck to look at it, and it doesn't get kicked when you enter and exit the cockpit, so I think it worked out pretty well.

- mark
 
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Really appreciate you posting this Mark. I'm on somewhat of a parallel path behind you with our RV6A. Interesting you had left the manual flaps and trim...I was thinking of going electric.
 
I thought about it, but concluded that it wasn’t worth the cost and complexity and would add one more set of things to fail.

If I did have electric flaps and trim, I might have used a GAD 27 to control them, which might have made the electrical system a bit simpler by removing the need for an auxiliary battery to keep the PFD and EIS alive during engine start. On the other hand, I like the solution I ended up implementing, which provides backup power to essential instruments seemingly forever off a smallish “alarm” battery.

- mark
 
nicely done Mark!
Attractive updates, very nice panel.

I've also updated my 2005 vintage -6.9 over the years, though I'm gonna stay with the dual G5 (with BU batts), GMU11 and GAD.
I've also had thoughts about going electric flaps, mainly for the space gained in between the seats. On the other hand the ability to quickly extend or retract them has the operational advantage.
 
Ivan's plane

I recognise that plane Mark! Ivan Salisbury, the original builder of that aircraft (which I believe was the first RV-6 in Western Australia), took many people (including me) for a demo ride. At that time Van's was providing referral fees for new customers and Ivan generated several! Sadly, Ivan is no longer with us.

I still remember the relatively luxurious leather seats, though they were not as well used as in the more recent photos.

It's great that Ivan's creation is in good hands and I'm sure that he would be proud.
 
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I talked to Ivan on the phone during pre-buy in 2011.

We chatted for close to an hour, about the bits in SOL he was happy with and other bits he’d have done different if he started again. Lots of general airplane chat.

Then I said, “Thank you, I’ve used up enough of your time,” and he said it was okay ‘cos he was in a hospital bed having chemotherapy and it’d have been more boring without someone to talk to!

A friend ferried an RV-7 from Albany to Wagga Wagga a few years ago. During the pick up, he found the attached photo on the back wall of the hangar. Original paint scheme. I expect some of that paint is still underneath the blue and burgundy stripes it currently carries :)

Small world!

- mark
 

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