Wire Re-re-re-routing

Minimal pictures of the progress, but today I did a bunch of wire rerouting, again.  Except for a few final touches, everything aft of the wing spar carry through is in pretty good shape.  Another couple of sessions and I should have the wiring up to the firewall as finalized as it can be until I build the panel itself and bring wires through the firewall from the engine.

I've been scratching my head over how to handle the coax cables coming through the outside portion of the spar carry through (exiting under the gear leg tower).  The hole they come through is almost directly behind the fuel line.  Since there's really no way to separate everything, I decided the best approach was to simply protect it all from abrasion.  I grabbed some clear vinyl tubing and zip tied it around the fuel line.  Once I zip tie the coax cables together, there won't be much movement possible and the tubing will protect the cables and fuel line.  I did the same on the other side.

The biggest problem area for wiring is where it all comes together in the center tunnel around the fuel valve.  Ever heard the saying "10 lbs of @$!* in a 5 lb bag?"  I originally had all of the wires that exited from the upper holes (both from the spar carry through and the upper hole in grey brackets) come over the top of the fuel lines and then down to the floor.  I thought that was going to work, but then I grabbed the fuel valve housing, and it turned out that there was just no room.  It's obvious that the RV9A is a 25 year old design - the wiring needs have gotten a lot more complicated over the last few decades!

I'm waiting for the glue to dry before I strap everything in place, but I put a couple of new cable mounts on the carry through.  The coax will go to the center cable mount and then go from there down and out to the wire runs on the floor.  There's a lot more room in that center to outside path vs going straight down behind the fuel lines. The other wires can go straight down to the floor since they are much more flexible than coax and can make tighter radius bends.

I riveted the elevator bellcrank shield in place.  This will hold the cable from the ELT that goes to the panel (at least the telephone wire that goes to the remote switch - I haven't decided if the wire that goes to the GPS will take the same route or just go directly through the conduit on the ELT side.  The only reason the telephone cable is crossing over is so that it doesn't run by the transponder and run with that coax on the way to the panel.  The transponder is so high powered that it's known to cause false triggers of the ELT.).  The AOA and pitot lines will also get mounted to this shield on their way up to the ADAHRS.

The plans indicate the length the elevator pushrod should be, but there's no way to set the overall length with the bearings before putting it all in place.  I took the measurements from the plans and made a little template to bolt through each bearing and screw the pushrod in to the right length.  I hope the plans measurements are actually accurate, but I won't find that out until the elevator is in place.

This bolt going through the front bearing took me a solid hour to put in.  There are two thin washers that go on the inside between the bearing and the control column. I had to try about 100 different methods to hold them in place while I put the bolt through!  Between the tight tolerances and the inability to get my hand in between the ribs, it was a nightmare.