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Powerplant Issues

V

vernhendershott

Well Known Member
Had a very frustrating day due to poor quality parts and missing parts from the Powerplant Kit, sent the following to Van's as there will be no staff there until Tuesday to deal with it.


Dear Joe,

Please deal with these issues or pass them on to the correct person and let me know who is to deal with each please.

We started on the Powerplant kit today and found that we could not make much progress due to the following:

1. Page 45-02 The Master Relay

We tried to follow the instructions to install the Master Relay and found that the hole pattern on the firewall was about 1/4 inch to small for the part supplied. That is to say that the holes in the relay were about 1/4 wider than the placement of the nutplates that are there for the Master Relay to be bolted to. The firewall holes were factory located and the holes in the relay do not have the material to grind them out to make a fit that would be acceptable. Please provide the correct part to fit the firewall so that we may make some progress.

2. Page 45-03 Inline Fuse installation

We tried to follow the directions to make up the Inline Fuse using a ES 321045 on one end and an ES 320562 on the other and found that none of these parts were supplied. It would seem that you have been making changes to what should be in bag 2813 and that it was decided to leave these out, as they are required please supply them and any other parts that are called out in the drawings and that have been deleted from the bags. In my case there were only two parts in bag 2813.


1.000 F 4 DTX-S ELBOW TUBE-PIPE 1/4

1.000 EA HOSE H177X3 3" LONG HOSE



3. Page 45-03 The Ground lead to the battery



In this step two ground wires come together at the battery box case and are held on by an AN Bolt, washer and a MS 21042-3 Nut. These nut that were provided are of such poor quality that you can not get a 1/4 inch socket on them and as you know they take a very large amount of force to turn on to the bolt, particularly when they are so bent shut that a socket will not go on them. Please supply hardware of sufficient quality that it may be used. It is just my personal opinion, but I do not think "Missile Nuts" have any place on a homebuilt aircraft, even when they are of good quality they are very hard to work with as most of us do not have "Snap On Tools" in the size range required to work with them and normal "Craftsman" tools just do not have the close tolerance to get the job done in a way consistent with good quality work. Please consider a better choice of hardware.



Van's has done a good job on the plans and it is important to not skip around from one page to another as tasks can be missed and work may need to be undone and repeated as your staff planned the work in good order. When we have these hardware issues and are told to just go and do something else it is encouraging us to make these mistakes, which is not good for the customer or the end product.



Best regards,

Vern



Vern Hendershott

RV-12 120186
 
vernhendershott said:
Had a very frustrating day due to poor quality parts and missing parts from the Powerplant Kit, sent the following to Van's as there will be no staff there until Tuesday to deal with it.


Dear Joe,

Please deal with these issues or pass them on to the correct person and let me know who is to deal with each please.

We started on the Powerplant kit today and found that we could not make much progress due to the following:

1. Page 45-02 The Master Relay

We tried to follow the instructions to install the Master Relay and found that the hole pattern on the firewall was about 1/4 inch to small for the part supplied. That is to say that the holes in the relay were about 1/4 wider than the placement of the nutplates that are there for the Master Relay to be bolted to. The firewall holes were factory located and the holes in the relay do not have the material to grind them out to make a fit that would be acceptable. Please provide the correct part to fit the firewall so that we may make some progress.
Click to expand...

There was an adapter kit sent out, or you can slot the holes in the relay to get it to fit.


2. Page 45-03 Inline Fuse installation

We tried to follow the directions to make up the Inline Fuse using a ES 321045 on one end and an ES 320562 on the other and found that none of these parts were supplied. It would seem that you have been making changes to what should be in bag 2813 and that it was decided to leave these out, as they are required please supply them and any other parts that are called out in the drawings and that have been deleted from the bags. In my case there were only two parts in bag 2813.
Click to expand...

I went to the hardware store and bought the correct size.


In this step two ground wires come together at the battery box case and are held on by an AN Bolt, washer and a MS 21042-3 Nut. These nut that were provided are of such poor quality that you can not get a 1/4 inch socket on them and as you know they take a very large amount of force to turn on to the bolt, particularly when they are so bent shut that a socket will not go on them. Please supply hardware of sufficient quality that it may be used. It is just my personal opinion, but I do not think "Missile Nuts" have any place on a homebuilt aircraft, even when they are of good quality they are very hard to work with as most of us do not have "Snap On Tools" in the size range required to work with them and normal "Craftsman" tools just do not have the close tolerance to get the job done in a way consistent with good quality work. Please consider a better choice of hardware.
Click to expand...
RV-12 120186[/QUOTE]

Try putting the nut in a vise and running an oiled screw in and out with a battery drill to "stretch it" out .

Vern, I totally agree, but I think we are gonna have to improvise to get these birds flying.
 
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Hi Larry,

There is no mention of an adapter kit for the relay in any of the revisions that I have seen and I did not get any parts for same. If this were an RV-8 it would be no big deal, I would just fix it but as it is an ELSA and it must conform to the SLSA of its type sending incorrect parts is just not acceptable to us as we have to face the DER and Van's will not be there to explain all of the undocumented changes.

Yes I could purchase the parts from Aircraft Spruce as they again have to be the aircraft grade parts from the SLSA aircraft but after spending $ 60,000 and having wasted much of my time dealing with Van's problems it is time for them to get their hands around the concept that the ELSA requires a much higher standard of conformity than their other kits and "oh that will work" is not the acceptable solution that it was on the EAB kits.

Yes I could spent several hours trying to fix poor quality hardware or poor selection of hardware but again it is not up to us to make changes and we were told that we were purchasing a quality kit (for the vast majority of the kit it is, they just go cheap from time to time at our expense, not nice).

Have a good day.

Best regards,
Vern
 
Vern,

Your original post indicated you had a problem with the master relay mounting. I had a problem with the starter relay and used the adapter plate that Van's sent me. ALL than worked just fine! Are you SURE you have a problem with the MASTER relay OR the STARTER relay????????
 
Hi Marty,

I think it is the Master, it is part number 992819 and has Mickey Mouse ears for mounting. It is mounted on the upper firewall near the center line.

Best regards
 
Both the master relay and the starter relay have the "Mickey" ears. The starter relay is immediately below the master relay. I had no problem mounting the master relay but had to use the adapter plate that was sent to us by Van's to mount the starter relay. Hope that helps!
 
STARTER SOLENOID ADAPTER (TRANSFER PLATE)

The Van's supplied transfer plate can be mounted three other ways from the instructions supplied with the part; flipped up and to the right, up and to the left, & down to the left. Van's showed it down and to the right. I found Van's location to interfere with the middle rudder pedal channel and a platenut with the bolt through it which practically hit the terminal on the bottom of the solenoid. Both "up" positions interfere with the stiffener in the firewall. The only viable position is down and to the left. Then wire P154 which runs between the starter and master solenoids is too short. I ran this by Van's. Anyone else agree with me or did I miss something?
Larry H.
 
vernhendershott said:
Hi Larry,

There is no mention of an adapter kit for the relay in any of the revisions that I have seen and I did not get any parts for same. If this were an RV-8 it would be no big deal, I would just fix it but as it is an ELSA and it must conform to the SLSA of its type sending incorrect parts is just not acceptable to us as we have to face the DER and Van's will not be there to explain all of the undocumented changes.

Yes I could purchase the parts from Aircraft Spruce as they again have to be the aircraft grade parts from the SLSA aircraft but after spending $ 60,000 and having wasted much of my time dealing with Van's problems it is time for them to get their hands around the concept that the ELSA requires a much higher standard of conformity than their other kits and "oh that will work" is not the acceptable solution that it was on the EAB kits.

Yes I could spent several hours trying to fix poor quality hardware or poor selection of hardware but again it is not up to us to make changes and we were told that we were purchasing a quality kit (for the vast majority of the kit it is, they just go cheap from time to time at our expense, not nice).

Have a good day.

Best regards,
Vern
Click to expand...

I certainly can't disagree Vern, just trying to help.
 
Last edited:
Mondays Powerplant issues

Here is todays letter to Van's. It sure seems strange that they have been working on the engine installation for well over a year now and they have not had time to proof read their drawings and get the kit parts in line with the drawings.

Dear Joe,

Please deal with these issues or pass them on to the correct person and let me know who is to deal with each please.

Tried to get going on page 45-07 today and got to Step 2 and found that the words are nothing like the image in Figure 1 so we are stuck until you can tell us which is correct, words or picture? In any case we could not proceed as no ES 31890 has been provided in the kit.

So we moved on and came to Step 7 where the words tell us to use the ring terminal called out in Figure 1 and there is no ring terminal called out for this task and we would not have it even if we had an idea of which one to look for as we only were provided two very small ring terminals with this kit. Please sort out what the correct hardware is and send same.

We are again stopped from any real progress by the lack of quality control on the drawings and materials that are not provided in the kit. Please get management involved as I understand several of the Powerplant sections are worse when we get there.

As you know we are now stopped on many issues, and the fuel tank issue is well over two months old with no communication on when we can do something with it. We are never going to get the fine aircraft finished if we can not get some of this poor work resolved and good quality parts and instructions provided.

Have a good day.

Best regards,
Vern

Vern Hendershott
RV-12 120186
 
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