1000 Hour Milestone!
Before I get into my progress I wanted to point out a particular build milestone. Out of curiosity, while typing this up I wanted to add up the hours I've spent on this build and low and behold I'm a handful of hours away from 1000 hours build time (Will get there tomorrow). What does this mean? Well nothing really only that I've spent 1000 hours bucking rivets, cutting/shaping aluminium, deburring, fiber-glassing and all the other fun exciting things you get to do when you build yourself an RV. What it doesn't take into account is the countless hours you spend researching and dwelling over every aspect of the build. I won't even speculate on how much time I've spent on those activities.
A rough estimate Vans gives you on an RV-10 build is around 2000 hours. So that would mean on a standard build I should be about halfway done, however I did a quick build which is estimated to save around 1000 hours. So why am I not done??? It's pretty obvious to me that I have greatly increased my building time (and costs) through a number of modifications or plan deviations which exponentially increase the time you spend on particular steps. Priming alone will add a good 50 hours to your build. Add an air-conditioner, add another 50 hours. Want full blown interior? 50 hours... you get the point. The current RV-10 I've been flying is essentially plans built with a carbonated engine and steam gauges and is pretty awesome.
My advice is the same advice given to me and that if you want to streamline your build, reduce headaches and unknown costs then just build it per the plans. If I had done that I would probably be wrapping up by now... however if you want to customize your build, put what you want in it... that's part of the fun of experimental but comprehend the price/time trade-off. If I had to do it over again knowing what I know now I would probably not do a few things. That said I'm not flying this yet so can't say anything definitive. Back to the build....
Fuel System
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| Section FF4 |
When it comes to these sections I really need to credit
Tom with
TSFlightlines for helping me out. He worked with me on figuring out where and how to mount the fuel transducer and custom made my fuel and oil lines to my specific measurements. Making really the hardest part of these sections doing the measuring of the lines. If you have a complete stock setup he has those measurements and can just send you the lines, similar to when I ordered my brake and internal fuel lines.
Firewall forward though my system is a bit out of the norm with my forward facing servo. After taking some time to work through some things, I ended up happy with the routing and obviously the quality of the lines. Here's some pics
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| Firewall to Mechanical Pump |
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| Mechanical pump |
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| Line to Servo |
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| Cube right off servo |
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| From Cube/Servo to Distributor |
Oil System
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| Section FF5 |
For the oil system I went with the larger
Airflow Systems Oil Cooler. Given some of the heat I fly in I wanted the extra cooling. I am also using a butterfly valve kit from
TCW. This allows me to control the airflow and in turn control the oil temp better. The idea in the summer have it wide open, in the winter time you can close it a bit to ensure your oil heats enough to boil out any water. Water/Oil mix in a sitting engine is bad! These modifications were fairly simple to do. I haven't mounted the servo yet for the butterfly valve but the rest is done!
