safety wire on the Whirlwind 200RV

[erich weaver]

Recently got back my prop from Whirlwind and installed it last weekend. Been through the proecess a few times now and still hate doing the safety wire, just a real pain. Made it through doing the standard technique of safety wiring the prop nuts in pairs, but what makes it especially tough is that in some cases, the twisted pair of wires is squeezed between the nut and the hub. If the nut isnt clocked just right to align one of the flats just right, there simply isnt room. If you temporarily change the clocking to thread the twisted wire pair through, when you reclock it to get the proper torque, it just binds up against the safety wire. Very frustrating.

Muddled my way through to a sort-of acceptable result, but it occurred to me afterward that it would be much easier to just avoid the whole twisted wire pair fit problem. Wouldnt it also be acceptable to just thread a single wire strand through all six nuts in a series of s-curves and then just twist the two ends together where it meets back on itself? Sure would be a lot easier than fitting the wire between the nuts and the hub.
Havent seen or heard of anyone doing this before so Im probably overlooking something. I suppose one drawback is that any break in the wire results in no protection on any of the bolts instead of just two bolts, but I dont see properly installed safety wire failing, so not sure that would really sway me.
Thoughts?
erich

[Guy Prevost]

I think a single strand is a lot of eggs in one basket. I just re-installed my Whirlwind after maintenance and found it easier this time. I looked carefully at each bolt and figured out which ones were going to be easy and which ones hard. I then figured out the least painful way to pair the nuts, so that I always started with a hard one and finished with an easier one. Not having to pass twisted pair behind the nut was a huge part of that criteria. I also figured out that a steel rule passed behind the nut will push the end of the safety wire through so you can grab it with needle nose pliers.

This all sounds complex; in simple terms I found that 10 minutes spent planning the safety wire paths saved me 45 minutes of frustration. I still had to do one of them 3 times though.

[humptybump]

The issue with threading all the bolts is that a single break in the wire frees all of the bolts.

A similar pattern is present when performing rib stitching in fabric covered wings. While the string is. Continuous, each stitch is tied off individually so an break in the string results in only a single lost stitch rather than unraveling the entire rib.