The dog days of.... Winter?

When it's only 25 degrees in the hangar, I don't spend too much time out there. For the last few days it's been no more than an hour or so of wiring before my finger tips start to get too cold to do intricate work. I'm not alone; even Mr. Cabot Bennett is finding current conditions to be a little on the cold side, and that's in the house!

As far as the wiring goes, at least the wires are getting bigger. Oddly enough, despite its prominent size and the verbose description of it in the plans, I had trouble finding this one:

The problem turned out to be that I had snugged it up in between the cylinders to keep it from getting hung up on anything when we were moving the engine out to the hangar.

I also had a little trouble finding the Rotax-supplied connector that it will mate to. It wasn't in the Van's baggies - it was sitting in the little cardboard box that came with the engine, which in retrospect makes perfect sense, considering that it was, well, Rotax-supplied.

There's a lot more wire than needed, so the excess gets folded back against itself and tie-wrapped into place. There's another wire whose purpose escapes me at the moment that gets coiled up and tie-wrapped in the same neighborhood. Given that it leads to the trigger coil, it might be used to provide RPM info to the tachometer.

The next wires were the two big white ones that attach to the starter motor. The first comes off of the starter relay and gets attached to the least accessible starter motor lug that I've ever seen. I had to reach down through the engine mount and past the big ignition modules to delicately place a washer on the stud. Well, that's what was supposed to happen, anyway. What actually happened is... I dropped the washer. And it was just the right size to have enough momentum to roll away, but not quite heavy enough to make any noise while doing it. I finally found it four or five feet away from where it first hit the hangar floor.

That was enough fun for the day.