Fixing squawks
I took the day off today to fix the squawks from yesterday. I could not even attempt to concentrate on work today. All night I had flying dreams and kept waking up going over the squawk list over and over in my head.
I already fixed the small fuel link yesterday. I guess I never tightened the nut on the fuel inlet fitting. I’m using an angle fitting. It threads in loosely and then a nut is reversed down on the threads to tighten the connection. It must have been leaking during my ground runs, but I didn’t notice it. The blue dye from the fuel was obvious on the nose gear leg after the first flight.
The other thing I fixed yesterday was the idle mixture. Terry indicated it was a bit rich. I backed off the adjustment 3 clicks.
Next fix was the oil leak. There was a bunch of oil droplets on the inside of the bottom cowl, back left corner. Traced it down to the oil cooler. I didn’t have the inlet/outlet fittings quite tight enough. Easiest way to fix it was to remove the cooler from the baffles, put another rotation on the fittings, and put it back together. Very messy job now that oil is in there. Hopefully that will stop the leaks.
I messed around with the cover panels a bit. We had trouble getting a couple of the screws in yesterday. I elongated a couple holes in some non-essential areas to make it all fit.
Last task was the canopy latch. Terry pointed out that I have everything so tight that the latches aren’t going completely over the rollers. I tried elongated the holes in the latches (per Vans instructions), but need to get a new Dremel bit. Mine is shot.
I checked out everything firewall forward very carefully. Touched every fuel, oil, electrical, and control cable connection to make sure nothing was loose. All looked good. The bottom cowl is back on now. All I have to do is fix the latch issue, put on the top cowl, and she’s ready to go again!!