No pictures - I keep forgetting to put the camera in the truck - but lots of education to go with my recreation on the build, and I figured I'd fill y'all in.
My problem with gauges was the ground - they just weren't getting a good one. So I daisy chained it like we did the "hot" from the battery and now they all work, excepting the tach. Consensus is that the darned gauge is faulty, not the wiring. Or, on a slim possibility, I may have let the smoke out of it somehow. Valley Engineering says to send it back to them and they'll replace it (it is part of the Firewall Forward package, and so I can't send it back to VDO).
On Valley Engineering: They make a fine engine, gorgeous props (in their in-house subsidiary, Culver Props), but the documentation provided is limited to the tags they hang from the sensors. They make up for this by answering the phone and if the answer to a question isn't immediately available, they'll call one back with it in short order. I'm going to have to invest in some books on VW engines.*
This lead to some engine hilarity. The minor stuff I could suss out on my own - tightening oil line connections to the cooler, for example, but when I cranked the engine for the first time with working gauges the oil pressure shot straight up to 60 psi and stayed there. Your garden variety VW engine should be running about 25 psi oil pressure on start, so I shut it down immediately and said many, many bad things. It could be one of two things: a stuck oil pressure relief valve or the installation of a high pressure oil pump.
It's the latter, which makes sense. So it's working as it should.
I ran the pitot tube tube () through the wing after several attempts. First I went for the wet noodle approach of pushing just the tubing up along the inside of the wing. That went as well as one can imagine. Then I took some excess wire left over from rigging and tried to run that through. Slightly better than the noodle approach with the tubing, but it didn't work either. So I put the wire inside the tubing to keep it from hanging on the drag/anti-drag wires and the ribs. That managed to make the inside of the tubing a little cruddy looking, but didn't work either. Then I got a small drain unclogger wire, taped the end up to keep it from cutting the fabric or hanging, and ran it through. Hit it the first time, taped the end of the tubing to it, and dragged it through.
Now, then, the back of your typical ASI and altimeter has threaded holes. My altimeter does not. So I had to come up with a plug to fit into it securely. I'm tying the static ports of both together with a T that goes to filter. In the course of fitting them I learned that once a fitting goes into tubing it's really not coming back out. I broke the T fitting attempting it. Oh, well, that's why I bought two. Enough bad words said over that to where it's bumped down on the sh!t-to-do list.
And so begins the saga of the cowling.
The cowl provided with the kit is a spun bowl of aluminum. It's very pretty but has some unique problems with it. I didn't realize just how soft it was and it's a little beaten from moving and storage, but nothing serious. I'm going to blame that on the fact that the top of the bowl isn't quite 90 degrees to the flat. It's flared a bit. But we'll come around back to that.
With the center hole enlarged and fit onto the engine, we measured back from the seam to find that I need about 14" back from it to make it to the fuselage (being a bit generous; one can trim excess off a lot better than add to it). I have quite a bit of 12" wide 6161T6 sheeting that was intended for leading edge material unused from when I opted to buy some T3 aluminum for that instead. My plan, which I'm sticking to, is to run a 2" strip over the transition pieces from the cowl bowl and then put the 12" stuff on from it.
But first I have to put on the transition pieces that lay under the bowl, the strip, and the sheet. My first attempt saw me putting the piece too far down into the bowl, which forced a sort of bowing effect. When I got towards the end of the piece it was sticking above the end of the bowl. Sigh. Well, I may not be good at a lot of things, but I can drill out a pop rivet like a pro, thanks to much practice. Out it went. I grabbed another piece, backed up a bunch towards the edge of the bowl, and went at it again. It worked, but there was some buckling between rivets. Bah!
Ah, I need to pre-roll the sheeting. Done. That seems to work much better, but there's some slight bowing of the sheeting. It doesn't make sense. That's when I took a big step back and noticed the joined sheeting flared outwards. It's only in the bowl by just over an inch, so it's not picking up the curve. The bowl itself is flared. I cut my joining sheets down to about a foot long and ran them around. Now when I run the 2" band around I can pull it in slightly to give me a nice transition and correct for it.
That's where I left it yesterday, ready for the 2" band. I have to get a better set of snips to get a really clean edge on my strips (oh, but for a metal shearing machine!), and a little time for my aching back to recover from bending over a cowl for four hours.
* About a zillion years ago I owned a VW Bug with serious mechanical issues, so I know how to do most basic stuff on VW engines as well as some troubleshooting. But I need lots of refresher training.