The last post outlined the design of the new Aerovee intake, plenum, and the four equal-length runners. Since then, I’ve been busy with fabrication: Two intake elbows had to be CNC’d and welded to the initial runners, the plenum design finalized and its attachments to the runners measured, and then the actual plenum and runners …
In the last post, I showed my DIY pipe “LEGO” kit that I would use for modeling the runners. Once I had those all fabricated, it was time to go try it on the airplane. To get an idea for how a plenum would fit, I just made a flat disk with four attachment points …
As explained in the last post, merely making a custom intake elbow for the AeroVee on the Sonex did not yield a satisfactory mixture distribution. After some discussions, I’ve decided to fabricate an entire intake, using individual runners to the cylinders. This won’t just entail replacing the intake elbow but also designing some sort of …
The AeroVee Volkswagen conversion engine used for Sonex aircraft is notorious for having poor mixture distribution between the cylinders. During my test runs, I’d noticed that the #4 cylinder (ordered in conventional crankshaft order starting with #1 nearest the prop, which makes #4 the right rear cylinder. For some reason Sonex uses a different numbering …
One of the things I’ve worked on with N132EA was to clean up the wiring. As some of you may know, the importance of neat wiring work was ingrained in me from a young age working for the electrician at my Dad’s job during summers. Things were required to be done neatly, any wires crossed …
So it’s been a while since the last update… What happened is that one of the members of our local EAA chapter was going to ship his home-built Sonex airplane to the mainland and sell it. A couple of us who are interested in flight training made a deal that if we each became co-owners of the …
As I mentioned in the last post, I left the key on and ran down the Ballistic Lithium battery. Instead of just forking over another $100 I thought it would be fun (and “cheaper”) to make my own pack. This is what the Ballistic battery looks like if you crack it open. The battery cells …
Continue reading ‘Microsquirting the NC30, part #47: New battery’ »
Since the last post only got to the first tricky thing, here’s the sequel. In addition to getting the air density right, the second tricky thing has been parametrizing the volumetric efficiency. The Megasquirt engine controller can use different parametrizations of the VE. It always depends on the engine RPM, but there are several alternatives …
Continue reading ‘Microsquirting the NC30, part #46: Tricky Tuning’ »
The blog was down for just over a week, the machine hosting it just suddenly refused to post. This was one month after the three-year warranty ran out, but Asrock came through and replaced it anyway, probably because there is a known hardware problem on these low-power “Avoton” boards. Anyway, I’ve done a lot more …
Continue reading ‘Microsquirting the NC30, part #45: More tuning’ »
As the last post ended, I had to pull out the welder and fix the leak in the fuel pump housing. Even though it’s been a while since I welded aluminum last, the corner weld worked OK. There were a few little snags but after letting it cool down I put the housing under water …
Continue reading ‘Microsquirting the NC30, part #44: Fuel filter bracket’ »