Testing the Wiring

We’ve been making progress here and there on the wiring over the past few weeks.  It’s not yet done, but it is at the point that we can test some of it.  As such, we connected the battery and fired up the master switch.

First test was the flaps, which didn’t work.  After looking around, I realized I forgot to put the fuse in the circuit that feeds the essential buss from the main buss (and the flaps are on the e-buss).  After putting that in, they worked great.

Next up was testing some of the sensors.  For this, we temporarily installed our Dynon D120 engine management system.  Here’s a picture of it fired up.

Hard to tell from the picture, but here’s what we verified is working:

• Manifold pressure — in the upper left of the screen; you can see it’s showing the atmospheric pressure
• Oil pressure — showing 0
• Oil temp — showing 75 degrees, which was the temp of the garage
• Battery voltage — showing 8-something, which is really low.  Need to charge the battery
• Current draw — showing 1A (from the D120).  Went to 2A when I hit the flap motor, so that seems to be working
• Fuel pressure — was showing 0.something, not 0.0.  Not sure why, but will worry about this later

That’s all for now.  We’ll do another test once the entire panel is in and a complete test when the wings are attached.

Note to avoid any battery shorts, we didn’t connect the real 2 ga. ground wire to the battery; rather, we used a smaller wire with an inline 20A fuse.  We’ll probably keep it this way until we’re ready to start the engine, since the starter is really the only thing that needs such a fat wire.