Peak Entropy on Panel and Electrical Upgrade

[AlexPeterson]

Greetings,

After 15 years and 1540+ hours flight time, in October I started on an upgrade which will include complete modification to the electrical system as well as new avionics. This picture, at first glance, appears to one of an airplane wreck:



Unlike during the initial build of the plane, where I mostly worked on one system/component at a time, this project requires a lot of simultaneous sub-projects at once, hence the huge mess...

The electrical system changes include: battery moved to forward of the firewall, solenoids ditto, fuse and grounding blocks moved from near the firewall (inside) to between the panel and sub-panel.

One finds that maintaining an RV for 15 years greatly increases one's wisdom about what to place where... A design goal for this project has been to eliminate the need to climb under the panel for most things. I'll post pictures as I progress.

(Entropy: state of disorder of things)

[scard]

Oh dear. I wish you hadn't posted that picture. I fear something similar is in my near future.

[Ironflight]

Eh.......you should be able to have that flying by next week, don't ya think?

[GalinHdz]

I feel you pain and apprehension. FWIW, my instrument panel went from this:


to this:


And finally to this. It seemed to take forever, was frustrating and I thought it would never work but in the end was worth every minute.


GOOD LUCK!

[Bob Martin]

Hey....
WHEN will you have it done?????....
WHEN will you have it done?????....
WHEN will you have it done?????....
WHEN will you have it done?????....
What? you have been down for how long?
Don't you like to fly?
----------
Couldn't resist.....
Congrats on starting.

[terrykohler]

I feel your pain. Just completed a panel replacement on my 9A, taking it from steam to two GRT units and a GTN650. I had a brief Oh Sh** moment sitting in the cockpit with all of the wires dangling after I pulled the old panel. Took me a while to remember that they had gone in one at a time. It also took me about twice as long as I originally planned and cost nearly 50% over budget (in other words, met my standard build criteria), but the results are well worth it. The real fun has been learning to operate all the new stuff - I'm back in student mode.
With the passing of the steam era, I would note that the days of moving seamlessly from one plane to the next will soon be behind us. Buttonology is becoming nearly as important as stick skills (just kidding).
Good luck with your build. Breathe in, breathe out. Enjoy the journey.
Terry, CFI
RV9A N323TP

[rv8ch]

Alex, please do share what you learn about how to redo it. I'm just at the point of getting back into the panel, and hints/tips will be most welcome.

What is interesting is seeing the number of RVs that will go through panel upgrades is increasing. This should spur lots of innovation, interesting discussions and new products.

[AlexPeterson]

Originally Posted by rv8ch

Alex, please do share what you learn about how to redo it. I'm just at the point of getting back into the panel, and hints/tips will be most welcome.

What is interesting is seeing the number of RVs that will go through panel upgrades is increasing. This should spur lots of innovation, interesting discussions and new products.

Mickey, thanks, will do. Here is a picture taken early in the process, just as I was getting into the teardown. This would be the "oh, s***, what the **** am I getting into!" phase:



I'm 2.5 months and about 190 hours into the project. The majority of work has been re-doing the electrical distribution, planning, design, servo mounts (I had Century servos before, so needed to adapt the mounts). The actual wiring won't take too long. I hope to be done around the end of Feb...

Stay tuned!

[Jesse]

Many of these pictures look way too familiar. I regularly see a transformation like Galin shows taking place over a 2-3 week period.

[AlexPeterson]

I completed the panel about a month ago. It took a bit over 300 hours, but at least half of that, perhaps 2/3's, was redesigning and redoing the electrical system. More details here if you are so inclined, in the December 2016 and March 2017 editions.

I'm very happy with how it turned out, and I've found no big deal in transitioning to the efis display from the old gauges. I retained the A/S indicator as a backup, but I only look at from time to time for comparison.

I've got a few more labels to modify and/or generate, but here's the final product:



The goals of the project were met, namely, replacing some gyros and A/P parts that needed repair, ADSB in/out capability, coolness of big screen, etc.. I also had a major goal of making things easy to maintain, specifically minimizing the need to climb under the panel. A few more thoughts are in the newsletter linked above.