Cowl Flap Wiring and Heat Shield

Once the cowl flaps were figured out and installed I worked on running wires to them. The wires run along the inside of the engine cowling (think high heat, vibration, grease, fuel, etc) so the first thing I wanted to do was seal the fiberglass. I used straight epoxy and just spread it around the entire inside of the cowling with a squeegee. After the epoxy was dry I painted the cowling with some high temp engine paint. Now that the fiberglass was sealed I placed a heat shield material on the cowling in the areas of the exhaust.  

I connected the wires with small #4 screws and ring terminals. I then placed heat shrink around the connection.

The wires were then taped down using smaller pieces of the heat shield. I also spread some fire barrier caulk around the wires to help protect them against heat and wear.

Here you can see how the wires travel along the cowling under the tape.

Here is the finished product. The heat shielding is sealed around the edges. Also, you can see the connector for the cowl flaps in the top RH of the cowling. The connectors is placed there so its easy to disconnect the power and remove the lower cowling. With the compound curves the heat shielding was kind of a pain to install. I had to make a couple layers overlap, but I'm happy with the final product.

Finished Fuel Lines

I finally got around to finishing my fuel lines. (Hours reported on previous post)

First let me tell you about the heat shielding product I bought. It's an automotive heat shield product that is very lightweight and has an adhesive backing to it. I called the manufacturer of the product (Heatshield Products) and explained what I was doing...building a plane and plan to install a heat shield on the engine side of the firewall. I also explained how this is a high airflow area and the general distance from the heat source. They suggested that the Thermaflect Cloth would be the best choice. I will be installing this on my firewall but that is for some other day. For now I lined the bottom of the soundproofing that is going in the tunnel to help reflect the heat away from the tunnel. Hopefully keeping my tunnel temps a little lower.

First I applied the Themaflect cloth to the bottom of the soundproofing foam.

View looking down with everything installed. Notice the fuel pump sits at a small angle. For my install this just seemed to work better. I had to cut the plastic bushings that hold the line in place under the seat pans in order to get them on the fuel line.

View looking aft inside the tunnel. The Stainless Steel flex lines from Bonaco made this part pretty easy.
This earlier post discusses my order from Bonaco.

Line sticking out the side of the fuselage waiting to attach to the wing. Notice the 45 degree fitting. Hopefully all this attaches easily.