Lionclaw

Lionclaw

Well Known Member
This has been bugging me for a while. I can't rivet my baggage floor down until the wiring is settled.

I'm thinking about putting 2 pieces of conduit under the baggage floor as shown. The strobe power supply will mount on the side just behind the baggage bulkhead, the pitch servo will go next to the bellcrank, and the ELT will mount to the side of the in-line floor rib. The wiring to the tail will run along the j-channel through the tail cone.

1. Am I missing anything?

2. Recommended way of supporting the conduit? 1/8" holes and zip ties through baggage ribs?

3. What should I do with the ELT antenna?

Help! :confused:

baggage_wiring.jpg
 
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wire this

Andy,

Your ideas seem sound. I thought about doing the same thing but ended up just drilling holes in the bulk heads near the bottom, installing gromets and running the wires along the skin and fastening them down with sticky pads and zip ties.

Your way will be much neater. Pull an extra string or two though the conduit when you finished so you can add a wire or two later.

Mike ice
 
Andy,

Generally looks reasonable to me. I had to drill the holes for similar wiring AFTER the floors were riveted down. Another option (if I were doing this over) is to fasten the floors with nutplates and screws and you could get in there any time you want. Also consider whether there is sufficient diameter in the conduit for all the wires you MIGHT want to ever run back there. I ended up moving my battery from the firewall to behind the baggage bulkhead and that necessitated yet another hole for the #2 cable to the firewall. Would use less wire and not cross over the tailcone if you put the elevator trim on the pilot's side, since the elev trim tab is on that side also. I put my ELT antenna on the top of the tailcone, forward of the VS (and far enough away that it wouldn't beat on the VS when in flight - yes, I had to move it after reading a post about that issue). I used drip irrigation tubing for my conduit and it doesn't really need extra support. What are you doing to mount the strobe box?

Just a few stream-of-consciousness thoughts.

cheers,
greg
 
For what it's worth, this is what I did:

2006-01-02.1255.jpeg


It has worked out really well. You will note that I used low-oder (non-corrosive) RTV as the conduit passes through the bulkeads to help hold it in place.

This is worked great for me so far. For what it's worth, I'm running all of the wires to the tail in the same conduit....that would be strobe, position, trim and Dynon magnetometer wires. I was most concerned about RF noise with the Dynon magnetometer but everything works perfectly.
 
Beautiful Workmanship

Lionclaw said:
This has been bugging me for a while. I can't rivet my baggage floor down until the wiring is settled.

I'm thinking about putting 2 pieces of conduit under the baggage floor as shown. The strobe power supply will mount on the side just behind the baggage bulkhead, the pitch servo will go next to the bellcrank, and the ELT will mount to the side of the in-line floor rib. The wiring to the tail will run along the j-channel through the tail cone.

1. Am I missing anything?

2. Recommended way of supporting the conduit? 1/8" holes and zip ties through baggage ribs?

3. What should I do with the ELT antenna?

Help! :confused:

baggage_wiring.jpg
Click to expand...

Keep the strobe cables spaced apart from everything else - apart from nav or landing lights.

Very nice workmanship by the way.

Jim Sharkey
 
What you are planning to do is fine. I run most of my cables - strobe (power, left and right), tail light, AP servo, ELT, and trim control cable all through the central channel. I only route magnetometer wires from the side. So far I have no issue.

Picture shown at 420 hrs.
IMG_2370.JPG
 
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I did the same as Jamie and also used the Van's mountings on both sides for the strobes and the ELT. I will put the ELT antenna in the back near the tail as well. I agree with Jim, BEAUTIFUL workmanship, I wish I had the skill you obviously have.
 
Thanks for the input and the kind words. I'm flattered :eek:

I'll post back with a picture of what I end up doing.
 
Hi, Lionclaw.

Just my 2 cents opinion.
When I wanted to do the same, I wrote to Van's asking if it would be OK to cut a couple of holes into the rear bulkhead flange and associated front parts. They asked me that it has never been engineered. So, I didn't cut them, even if I felt it wouldn't be a safety issue.

I installed two corrugated tubes into the center channel ("pushrod channel") and inserted all strobes only in one of them and lights in the other.

VOR and COMM1 coaxials pass on the top (where you will like to lay tail strobe, el. trim, etc...) and cross the U-channel behind seats (dont' remember the exact name for it) as per static tube on the left side.
 
Andy, FWIW, I think your idea to install guide tubes is fine. Anchoring the tubes can be done lots of ways. For real simplicity, you could just put a little Proseal fillet around them at either end. Or use silicone adhesive.

I have one such tube in my RV8, and I anchored it by turning straight threads on one end (I see you have a small lathe), and using aluminum AN nuts on either side of the hole to lock the tube in place. Its not used for wiring though.

In the back of my plane, under the baggage floor, I didn't run conduit. I just installed the wiring, ran it through grommets and secured as usual. Logic here is if I ever need to pull those wires, it would involve drilling out those pop rivets to get the baggage floor up. But I thought that would be VERY unlikely.

I do like what Jamie did with the black plastic flexible conduit. Nice thinking there. That stuff flexes, and could be used as condiut around corners, whatever.

By the way Andy, after looking at 500+ photos in your Picasa album, all I can say is you're a special guy. Very nice work, my man.
 
Thanks Bill! I owe a lot of credit to my wife Laura. She's been super supportive, she drives a nice rivet, and manages to pull me away from the project when I get grumpy and want to break things. I couldn't function without her.

I went ahead and installed the conduit before closing up the floors. To retain the ends I drilled the holes undersize so they would fit in the small grooves in the conduit. A small fillet of proseal around each side will hopefully keep it from ever coming loose.

I've really got to hand it to Vans for designing such awesome airplanes and then following it up with such well made kits. I think an RV-8 is in my future :D
 
Just a thought ----

Lionclaw said:
To retain the ends I drilled the holes undersize so they would fit in the small grooves in the conduit.
Click to expand...

I dont like doing that, the conduit is pretty easy to chafe through. I would suggest drilling for a snap bushing, then using shoe goo or similar to fix the conduit inside the bushing.

Also, in the photos you have the conduit going over the step mount tube, if it will fit underneath, then it would be a better location.

As others have said, nice workmanship.

Carry on.
 
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RV10Rob said:
I've done the same thing in a couple areas. Has anyone actually seen this conduit chafe through in practice?

-Rob
Click to expand...

Yes, I have seen it before----but this was in my car building days, and I was pretty clueless about such things as de-burring holes, snap bushings, and doing whatever is needed to mitigate the effects of vibration.

Your method may work just fine, be sure the hole is smooth/deburred, and the conduit is fixed in place with shoe goo, or pro seal or EQ.

The was I see it, and I am still learning, there is a good reason you will find MilSpec code on snap bushings, and caterpillar bushing.
 
You might want to...

...treat the ELT antenna slightly differently.

Place the cable with a lot of slack at the ends of the conduits, so it the bulkheads do get damaged the antenna cable won't be stretched and broken.
 
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