A sea of wires

As the weekend gets ready to kick off I thought I would update this blog with whats been going on for the past few days.  I have been mounting the avionics that I received from Stein and so far I have managed to mount the GNS-400 IFR GPS, GSU-25 ADAHRS, GEA 24 Engine analyzer, and GAD 29 IFR interface.  I have also started installing the wiring harness that Stein made for me.  The harness is absolutely worth every penny I paid for it.  I am learning so much from seeing the work that Jon (at SteinAir) did.  I am also finding mistakes in the documentation but only a few small items so far.  For example they installed a dimmer wire for my remote Comm unit.  The comm unit does not have a display so there is no need for the wire.  That is actually ok since if I ever decide to replace it with the display version (which I would do if I were to do this again) the wire would be there.  I found one or two wires that are mislabeled as far as color code goes.  The most painful part of the whole thing is I have had to cut apart the wrapping that Jon used.  He did not know where all of my components would be mounted so he just guessed at locations (or used some standard they have).  I have also had to disassemble many of the connectors to run the wires.  The drawing they gave me will help immensely when it comes time to reassemble everything.  Here are a few pictures but they don't tell the whole story.

I also managed to design the labels for the switch panel and the dimmers.  I ordered the DecalPro kit and will give that a try soon.

Here is the wiring harness as I try to make sense of the different runs of wire.  It doesn't look like much here but wait until you see it as I try to fit all of that wire behind the panel!

This is the back side of the GPS-400 mounting tray.  The actual instrument slides into this carrier which is bolted to the panel.  I took this picture before I started pulling apart wire bundles.

This is a neat feature that Stein offers.  If you remember back a few months ago I was working on a db-9 aggregator with 4 plugs on it?  Well, this is Steins version and it uses DB-15 plugs and is where the Autopilot servo's all connect together.

This is the GPS-400 as I begin the mounting process.  I have to make sure the depth is right and that required me to cut a hole in the sub-panel.  Subsequently I had to enlarge the hole to allow the Comm radio to slide through.

This is actually a reference picture I took to show where this white wire went into the connector.  The white wire is the feed from my backup battery and goes to the main display.

Another reference picture but this one is for the GSU25 before I pulled a few wires out of it.

 

Here is the GEA24 engine monitor as I am drilling holes to mount it to the sub-panel.  I opted to mount it back here so that the wire runs from the engine compartment can be minimized yet have this box still be somewhat accessible from under the instrument panel.