Thu Mar 31 2011

Parking brake valve

Here's a picture of the parking brake valve mounted inside the cover with the fuel selector valve and mounting plate removed.

I temporarily put the center cover in place to see how much space there is in the corner for the brake lines to feed through.

With the bulkhead fittings temporarily assembled to the bracket, I could see that the bracket isn't thick enough. The nuts bottom out on the bulkhead shoulder of the fitting before clamping down on the bracket. Looks like I'm going to need some kind of a spacer here. Either that or modify the fittings.

I ordered these straight NPT to AN-4 fittings for the parking brake valve, but from this picture you can clearly see there's not going to be enough room for the tubing above the valve.

Some elbow fittings should work. I don't like the look of the second 90 degree elbow, though.

A 45 degree elbow fitting looks like it'll work better. Unfortunately that means another order to Aircraft Spruce. I'll try to delay that order as much as possible in hopes that the shipping won't be wasted on a $6 item. A side note: I called Lane Aviation. They did indeed have one of these fittings in stock, but they wanted $18 each. Ouch. I think I'll just wait and order from Spruce.