I had my buddies Mike Bullock (RV-7, rvplane.com, EAA Tech Counselor), Mike Rollison (RV-6) and Steve Koziol (RV-9) take a close look at my plane for any issues prior to first start. Here is what they found. Slightly loose starter solenoid wire. No protection of oil cooler scat. Un-torqued engine hoist bolt. Oil cooler scat rubbing oil dipstick tube. Missing safety wire on a plug above oil vernatherm. Firewall areas that needed sealing. After they left, i set about correcting all the squawks they found. AND I got to fly a carbon cub!

Here is the original hole for the battery cable as provided by Van’s. I used the stock Van’s cap to cover the hole along with some fire sealant. I also used fire seal along all of the firewall edges where there were gaps.

Here is the plug that was not safety wired.

Several bolts associated with these adel clamps and engine hoist had not been re-torqued. I quickly corrected the oversight.

I’m not happy with the placement of the exhaust pipes in relation to the sniffle tube. I’m going to find a way to route its output out of the cowl.

Faces of joy!

I also wanted to visually verify the timing that was set by the EI controller.

This post covers a couple different shop sessions. Four major things accomplished. 1. Fuel flow testing 2. Fuel tank calibration 3. Fuel pressure testing, and 4. Fuel sender calibration.

The first step was to calibrate the set points on the RED Avionics (formerly Princeton) fuel senders. Once the empty set point was obtained, we removed the fuel hose from the servo and using the boost pump ran fuel flow tests in 3 different attitudes. Nose high. Level flight. And nose low. The fuel test results greatly exceeded the FAA required 125% of maximum required fuel flow (15.6 mph for this engine). Also – there was very little unusable fuel amounts.

Next we reconnected the fuel hose and ran a fuel pressure test. I immediately heard a leak. Oh no!! With my brain fully disengaged, I called Mike. His first question “is your mixture full forward?”  BAH! What a dumbass. Of course mixture was full forward. I was dumping fuel into the cylinders. Well. The good news? It was a good test of my sniffle valve! With the mixture at ICO – the pressure was where it needed to be, and stayed that way.

Lastly I calibrated the fuel tanks in both the flight attitude and taxi attitude using the G3x. This took FOREVER. Filling tanks is quick. But draining the tanks solo… well it took about 9 min to drain 2 gal. So… with 42 gallons plus fill and calibrate time. Yeah. It took awhile.

My buddy Brian was on hand to help with the fuel flow testing. His clear fuel can was an absolute life saver. He found my excessive static protection hilarious. But I’m not taking any chances! I grounded the plane to the hangar, and i ran a wire into each drain can to ensure everything was at the same potential.

And keep a hand on the plane!!

First on the docket. The flaps still aren’t working as they should. They work perfectly in calibration mode but not in normal mode. According to the interwebs this means the flap switch and flap motor wires need to be swapped. Ok. So i did that. Still no joy. Now they work properly at least – except only for like 15 – 30 seconds. Then they don’t work at all.

I had to call Garmin for this one. Savannah asked me to send my configuration file as well as a screen shot. In the end – the problem was I only had a maximum airspeed set for full flap deployment. It also needed the partial flap speed set. Man. Too smart for its own good sometimes.

Next up. Bleeding the brakes. This went awesome. Until of course. It didn’t. I borrowed a pump from my buddy Woody across the way. Plan was to bleed from the bottom up. I set up an overflow pipe and container to catch the excess fluid.

First issue. A small leak at the master cylinder for one of the nylon compression fittings. Turns out I had a bad sleeve. Luckily this is a part that is available in the aviation aisle of Lowes. So a quick trip and that was fixed. Good thing that was my only issue.

Except it wasn’t! Inspecting the brake lines for torque – I forgot that unlike the fuel vents, the brake lines have a connection as they leave the fuselage for the gear legs. Guess what wasn’t fully torqued? You guessed it! Result. Brake fluid all over the place in the cockpit.

Great. Well that was a good stopping point for the night. Drain the brake fluid. Get some kitty litter. Attack again the next day. First step was a thorough cleanup of the spilled brake fluid. Next – torque the fittings. Now, start the brake bleed process again. This time 100% success!