ES-00077 Electrical Connector Installation Completed

Work continued today on completing the instillation of the ES-00077 blue electrical connector on the left side of the fuselage. Progress began by following the instructions which have the builder tapping the mounting holes in the F-00034-L&R mounting brackets for 8-32 threads. This will allow the electrical connector’s mounting bracket to be secured to the seat pans with four screws per bracket.

Tapping the mounting holes in one of the F-00034 mounting brackets for 8-32 threads.

After the all the mounting holes were tapped, the final touches were made to the wires going to the ES-00034-L electrical connector by way of dressing out the wires with wire ties creating a neat bundle. While access was still good, decided to also place a blob of RTV on the filter capacitor over the wire tie securing it to the standoff … this will insure the filter capacitor stays glued in place over time. Total overkill I’m sure, but I’ll have piece of mind knowing the capacitor can’t move freely.

Wires running to the ES-00077 electrical connector dressed with wire ties and ready for final assembly.

After rounding up all the mounting hardware necessary to mount the electrical connector, a trial fit was attempted only to discover the four mounting holes in the left and right seat pans were not drilled to #19 yet. I really don’t think I missed this step because the blue electrical connector is an upgrade to the kit so the wording may be missing from my plans. It is not a big deal except there was not enough room for a drill so had to use a reamer instead. So builders may just want to drill out these four mounting holes on each of the seat pans to #19 while it is in your hand and not on the fuselage.

Once the seat pan holes were enlarged to #19, the blue electrical connector was screwed to the F-00034-L electrical connector mounting bracket and the bracket was then secured to the seat pan with four screws coated with blue Loctite 243.

Tightening the hardware attaching the ES-00077 blue electrical connector to the F-00034-L mounting bracket.

Completed ES-00077 blue electrical connector mounted onto the fuselage.

I’m quite happy with the way the wiring turned out … the audio wiring is in a loop that swoops up and under the seat pan … the wiring for the blue electrical connector swoops down then curves up and around to the back of the blue connector. This keeps the audio and nav/strobe wiring well separated in areas where the wires extend beyond the shielding.