Building my new panel.

There are three parts to the 1947-48 panel. The outer most portion - Indirect Instrument Assembly - which is nothing more than a cosmetic cover and light reflector. Under this is the Flight Panel - which the instruments are attached to. The Flight Panel is secured to a three part Control Panel - this assembly is secured to the airframe and originally supported the radio stack.
We cut out the centre of the Flight Panel and riveted in a new section to reposition all our instruments. I used the same gauge of material as the original, and can't recall exactly what size it was. I did the same thing to the Indirect Instrument Assy. - cut out the centre and riveted in a new blank. We then installed the Flight Panel and Indirect Instrument Assembly without the instruments installed and we marked the new hole location ( Indirect Assembly) from the rear of the panel. I cut out all the holes with a drill press and hole cutter. I created the flanges for the instrument-hole cut-outs in the Indirect Assembly with a pair of pliers!
With all the new controls and switches associated with our engine conversion, we decided to replace the complete three-part Control Panel Assy. which I recall as being .032" thick. I built mine in one piece using the original as a template. This required straight 90 degree bends and one curved 90 degree bend. To make the curved bend we sandwiched the new blank between a two piece plywood pattern and carefully hammered the overhanging aluminum into shape. Nothing fancy but it worked and it does look a lot nicer than the piece we removed.

With the front-cowl boot removed installing the new wiring and poly-flow was quite straight forward.

Wiring in the early stages.  We performed as much work as we could pending the arrival of our engine conversion kit.  This made things rather difficult as accommodations had to be made for new engine controls, instrumentation, and associated wiring!  Most of my assumptions were adequate.... I say again, "most."

This is as far as we could take the panel until the Tyee STC holder coughed up the parts for the engine conversion. Damn near waited a year and then found we had to make some small mods to accommodate the conversion. No show stoppers but what a pain!

Finally the engine conversion kit was delivered... at least most of it, and we could finish up the panel.

I removed the old ARC 300 Nav/Com... there goes 30 lbs... and we installed a slim line transceiver and mode C transponder. Most of our flying on floats in sparse regions of Canada so conventional Navaids were of little use. Now it's just the portable GPS and good old fashioned Pilotage.

images/108_c_io_360wirediag.gif

The link above, shows how it all looks when incorporated into the original 108 wiring schematic.

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Copyright © 2003 David P. Miller
Last modified: March 22, 2004