Wheel Nut split pins, Brake calipers

Wheel split pins and brakes

This evening I used the hoist on the engine mount to raise the aircraft one side at a time, and remove each wheel. I then drilled through the axles and re-installed the wheels with the split pins retaining the wheel nuts in place. I’m able to do the nuts up just tight enough with my fingers to remove any slack.

After that I installed the brake calipers themselves and connected the AN fittings on the brake lines.

Filtered Air Bypass

This morning I began assembling the filtered air box. I realized that I can’t do a lot without having the air intake here to check the vertical alignment. So much of this morning was spent re-reading instructions.

I also started to ponder the logic of having a filtered air bypass. I guess it’s great to have if you ever manage to block a filter, but when I researched it, it became apparent that there has been a long history with reliability of the by-pass mechanisms, and many of them had failed. Some had caused engine damage in the process through ingesting broken rivets etc. It seemed to be a case where the failure mode was potentially more damaging than the issue that it was attempting to prevent, and also more likely.

So, I need to research this a bit more before I decide whether to add the complexity of a bypass door to the air filter on a purely VFR machine.