Brakes completed

I have been putting the finishing touches on the boot cowling . It is so hard to work up under the fuel tank , I want to finish as much as practical before final installation of the cowl. I have installed all the fittings on the gascolator and found a grommet that seals the hole in the firewall pretty well.

I had initially wanted to use a hard line from the tank valve to the gascolator inlet, but it did not work out. Where the line runs is right by the passengers feet and I was afraid it would get accidentally kicked and damaged. I settled on a short flex hose, which I thought would be more damage tolerant . The down side is it is a lot heavier.  The line will run from this 90 degree fitting,

Down to this 45 degree fitting that goes through the firewall.

I also plumbed the fuel drain line with the fuel resistant urethane hose I bought. This should work really slick and keep the EPA happy. I will final trim the hose after the boot cowl is installed.

Here is a shot of the exit position on the aft right boot cowling.

This shot shows the final filler neck grommet position and the installation of the filler cap. All this came out really nice and should help keep the fuel fumes out of the cockpit. I may have to put a little black RTV around here for a complete seal.

Today I worked on the final routing of the engine controls, fluids and indicating systems. Some of these must be installed concurrent with the boot installation. While I was looking for fitting today I stumbled across my brake bleeding tools so I tackled that project this afternoon. First thing was to make a bleeder fitting so 5606 did not get all over the inside. I'm not sure why, but Scott used a 1/8 27 pipe thread on the outlet fitting and a 3/8 24 straight thread on the filler fitting. Since this cap will fit on either way , it must be really easy for a hack to mess up these threads. To make a bleeder fitting I took a standard aluminum pipe fitting and force threaded it 3/8 24. It worked pretty good.

Using my Harbor Freight one man bleeding tool, I initially tried to suck the fluid up from the top. While this did work , I could not get good firm pedal. I ended up pressure bleeding from the bottom, this worked much better and the pedals only move about a 1/4 inch before brake application. I really need this tight pedal because of the angle my massive feet make on the rudder/brake pedals. This shot shows the setup, the hose on the left terminates with a Milton fitting that plugs into the air hose. With the air pressure at about 5 psi this worked great.

This shot shows the fitting installed to catch the fluid in the cockpit.

So far everything works great and no sign of any leaks. I almost forgot to mention that the reworked bungee covers arrived from Airtex. After my complaints, they took the time to rework the design and the result is a well made and excellent fitting cover. It took two months but the result was worth the wait.

This completes the landing gear.