jliltd
Well Known Member
I have been following the Earthx discussions and have a friend whom I helped install an EXT680 on his RV-8 firewall after Oshkosh 2017. It has worked great for him.
My RV-8 had the aft battery location with a Concord AGM aircraft battery. The airplane was down for a few months while Barrett Performance went through the engine. The battery didn't fare so well sitting around and had to be replaced. I opted to try one of the newer vented battery versions of the EarthX, the EXT900-VNT. I chose this vented model because of my battery location and wanted any smoke that might arise to be contained and vacate the fuselage. I added the optional EarthX vent adapter kit that takes both vent tubes and combines them into one larger tube. Included with this option is a machined vent port to send any smoke overboard.
Since the new EarthX was much smaller than the Concorde I fit new spacers around the perimeter of the EarthX. I also re-purposed a stainless steel securing band and latch from an old Artex ELT to keep the battery in place. I cross-drilled a hole in the latch for a safety pin.
I bonded two channel spacers under the stainless band with 3M tape to allow clamping down the battery within the suggested areas in the manual.
Here is another shot of the hold-down set up from the front:
Here is a photo of routing the battery vent kit to the fitting in the belly of the airplane along with a photo of the exit vent fitting from below. It was convienient to use the optional vent kit. The special plastic tubing supplied by EarthX is designed for high heat and chemicals so it does tend to want to kink of bent too far:
Here is a photo of the end result prior to re-assembling the baggage shelf:
I attached the EarthX BMS lead wire (black wire coming out of battery) to my G3X Touch system's GEA 24 LRU so that I get an alert annunciation on the GDU 460 screen if the BMS trips.
Here is a post I did two years ago describing how to do this for the G3X system:
http://www.vansairforce.com/community/showpost.php?p=1203629&postcount=7
The original battery hold down plate also holds the remote transponder and traverses the rear elevator bellcrank and pitch servo.
I have been flying this now for a month and so far so good. The starter has become alive and almost gives the impression I could taxi with the starter alone.
Jim
My RV-8 had the aft battery location with a Concord AGM aircraft battery. The airplane was down for a few months while Barrett Performance went through the engine. The battery didn't fare so well sitting around and had to be replaced. I opted to try one of the newer vented battery versions of the EarthX, the EXT900-VNT. I chose this vented model because of my battery location and wanted any smoke that might arise to be contained and vacate the fuselage. I added the optional EarthX vent adapter kit that takes both vent tubes and combines them into one larger tube. Included with this option is a machined vent port to send any smoke overboard.
Since the new EarthX was much smaller than the Concorde I fit new spacers around the perimeter of the EarthX. I also re-purposed a stainless steel securing band and latch from an old Artex ELT to keep the battery in place. I cross-drilled a hole in the latch for a safety pin.
I bonded two channel spacers under the stainless band with 3M tape to allow clamping down the battery within the suggested areas in the manual.
Here is another shot of the hold-down set up from the front:
Here is a photo of routing the battery vent kit to the fitting in the belly of the airplane along with a photo of the exit vent fitting from below. It was convienient to use the optional vent kit. The special plastic tubing supplied by EarthX is designed for high heat and chemicals so it does tend to want to kink of bent too far:
Here is a photo of the end result prior to re-assembling the baggage shelf:
I attached the EarthX BMS lead wire (black wire coming out of battery) to my G3X Touch system's GEA 24 LRU so that I get an alert annunciation on the GDU 460 screen if the BMS trips.
Here is a post I did two years ago describing how to do this for the G3X system:
http://www.vansairforce.com/community/showpost.php?p=1203629&postcount=7
The original battery hold down plate also holds the remote transponder and traverses the rear elevator bellcrank and pitch servo.
I have been flying this now for a month and so far so good. The starter has become alive and almost gives the impression I could taxi with the starter alone.
Jim
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