PLANNING FOR THE CONDUIT RUNS
The time has come to make plans for all of the wiring in my plane. While I have not made final decisions on some aspects of my avionics package, I do have a reasonable expectation of what it will require. This information in hand, I began to think about how to get those wires aft from the panel. I settled on three runs down each side using 3/4″ flexible conduit. One run is nearly completed for you, so I just had to add two more. You can easily spend a great deal of care lining them up perfectly, which I promise I attempted to do, but in the end, they get covered. The true objective is to make them straight enough to run wires down. Check. I started with small pilot holes and then expanded with a step bit. From there I deburred each and stood back to admire.
CONDUIT RUNS UNDER BAGGAGE FLOOR
Creating the conduit runs in the side spars was fairly straightforward. The required holes for the conduit into the baggage floor and beneath were a bit trickier. The goal is to make sure you space them far enough apart to give the conduit room to make the turns while ensuring all of it remains hidden. It isn’t terribly difficult, but it does require some thought and planning. Here are the images of where I spaced mine.
You can see I have the conduit run through as well in these pictures. Importantly, you can notice the spacing in the seat pan where I drilled access holes. The most difficult part was creating the lightening holes in the ribs beneath the seat. I’ll start with an image first and then explain the process.
The ribs are spaced too close together to get even a right-angle drill in there. I started by using a long drill bit extender and making a pilot hole down low. From there, I reamed the hole large enough to fit a smaller knockout punch in there. For the punches, I just used a small kit from Harbor Freight, that worked really well. I started with the smaller diameter punch to make room for the larger one. Ultimately I made 1″ holes in three locations (above). The manual punches worked great with a wrench. I deburred with a file and ran the conduit through the holes.
BATTERY PLACEMENT
I have chosen to mount a battery in the aft area of the plane. In order to get power to the forward section of the plane I will have to run some larger gauge wire up there. Rather than taking up one of my existing runs, I elected to create a specific path just for the battery wire. This took almost no time at all after the conduit runs. I drilled the holes and added bushings to each for the wire. Super happy I remembered to do this now and not later.
The image above is the final output of the conduit and wires coming aft in the plane. I’m quite happy and ready to move on.