bnt83
Final Approach
Everything is working great, took me a few tries to get all the red CGR-30P thermocouple connectors tight (doing that with one hand sucks). I spent a lot of time bundling and routing the harnesses forward of the firewall. I had to make brackets for ammeter shunt, manifold pressure transducer, engine data converter, oil pressure transducer.
One big help was buying the wire stripping tools that EI uses, I think both tools were under a $100 on amazon. Stripping the thermocouple harnesses thin outer jacket and then the conductor insulation without messing them up is almost impossible using a razor blade.
EI sends a pre-assembled harness that should work fine, being picky as can be I replaced the 8 or so wires that stay in the cabin with regular M27500 and M22759/16 wires as its thinner and less weight than the wire provided. I used all the high temp wires that pass thru the firewall as provided by EI.
One more thing, its seems pretty common to see plugs missing the back shells, some cases there isn't enough room behind a radio tray to install connectors with them and so they get left out. EI does not provided them but you can easily find something that fits if desired. All the wires are installed into the plugs with dual crimp contacts that crimps the insulation and the conductor so I would agree they don't need them. In this installation there was more than enough room to add them so I bought new Garmin backshell kits and used those on the EI harness.
Fuel quantity senders married to the Aerospace Logic indicator work great.
Things I don't like;
The fuel gauge is calibrated with the airplane on jacks and in a "flight level attitude" so they don't read correctly on the ground, not a biggie. Its probably 3 gallons off at the most depending on the quantity in the tanks.
If you have a power hungry strobe, like the 8 amp Cessna flashing beacon, the CGR dimmer will slightly pulse with it. During the day time I can't see it. At night with the screen dimmed way way down, I can. The darker I have it dimmed the more pronounced it gets. That being said, dimmed to an adequate level its fine. Someday that flashing beacon will go away and so will that constant 8 amp on-off-on-off loading will be gone.
One big help was buying the wire stripping tools that EI uses, I think both tools were under a $100 on amazon. Stripping the thermocouple harnesses thin outer jacket and then the conductor insulation without messing them up is almost impossible using a razor blade.
EI sends a pre-assembled harness that should work fine, being picky as can be I replaced the 8 or so wires that stay in the cabin with regular M27500 and M22759/16 wires as its thinner and less weight than the wire provided. I used all the high temp wires that pass thru the firewall as provided by EI.
One more thing, its seems pretty common to see plugs missing the back shells, some cases there isn't enough room behind a radio tray to install connectors with them and so they get left out. EI does not provided them but you can easily find something that fits if desired. All the wires are installed into the plugs with dual crimp contacts that crimps the insulation and the conductor so I would agree they don't need them. In this installation there was more than enough room to add them so I bought new Garmin backshell kits and used those on the EI harness.
Fuel quantity senders married to the Aerospace Logic indicator work great.
Things I don't like;
The fuel gauge is calibrated with the airplane on jacks and in a "flight level attitude" so they don't read correctly on the ground, not a biggie. Its probably 3 gallons off at the most depending on the quantity in the tanks.
If you have a power hungry strobe, like the 8 amp Cessna flashing beacon, the CGR dimmer will slightly pulse with it. During the day time I can't see it. At night with the screen dimmed way way down, I can. The darker I have it dimmed the more pronounced it gets. That being said, dimmed to an adequate level its fine. Someday that flashing beacon will go away and so will that constant 8 amp on-off-on-off loading will be gone.
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