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RV-7A Caleb Lesher

Norcalrv7

Well Known Member
First, a little background! I acquired my project in late 2014 in Brookings, OR. I work as a professional pilot for an air ambulance company in northern CA. Past flying jobs include SkyWest airlines, as well as cargo and instruction. I have a background in turbocharged hondas, as well as time as an A&P.

The original builder of my airplane flew behind a Subaru EZ30 for about 448 hours. Unfortunately, after some head work was performed, one of the valve guides was not installed correctly, and backed out. It dropped a valve, and beat up the bottom end pretty badly. On the way to an emergency landing at Gold Beach OR, he ended up short of the runway in the grass. There was some minor damage to the wheel pants, wing tip, rudder, but otherwise in okay shape. The aircraft was dissembled, and returned to a hangar where it sat.

Enter an excited 27 year old airplane enthusiast! I was excited but skeptical of the Subaru power plant. I love all aluminum car engines with EFI, but also have my roots deep in traditional aviation. When I purchased the airplane, I decided that eventually, It would be powered by an IO-360, but in the meantime, I would tinker with the Subaru.

 
There is a wealth of information on the internet. Unfortunately, It can be very difficult to locate the good information. A few searches of "Eggenfellner" or "Subaru airplane" Will leave you taken aback with some rather nasty arguments comparing lycomings or Subaru's. It seems the people who had bad experiences were also very noisy about it.

One of the best pieces of advice I ever received was that in order to succeed, you must first have a goal. Set unreasonable goals, and you will surely be disappointed.

From the beginning, my goal with the Subaru was simple: "Fly an airplane for fun that I own, under its own power, and burn cheap car gas" As we all know, there is no free lunch. Notice I didn't mention fuel flow, or how fast it needed to go. In the meantime, Id start buying up lycoming parts while my bank account recovered from buying the airplane.

 
for an airplane so dependent on its electrical system, I was not satisfied with the quality of the wiring job in the airplane. It has been through several phases, upgrades, changes etc.




I ended up ripping most of it out, redesigning a cleaner system that includes EFII's Bus manager system.



Okay, so maybe I got a little carried away with the rewiring project, but the results turned out great!


I also re-worked the slightly out of date WS Efis in favor of a newer HX system


 
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