It was a little tough to get a picture, but if you squint just right, you can see the work I did on the battery. The first issue with the battery is the fact that it is a new lithium design (not the spontaneously combust kind, but aviation specific lithium chemistry), which means it's a different size than the old school battery. The bar that holds the battery down doesn't fit very well with this design, so I modified the thickness of it. I also had to buy some modified terminals that screw to the standard terminals and allow the wires to be attached from the front side vs the top (since the hold down strap covers the standard terminal location - had I know this battery was a different size, I would have changed the entire Van's design to make the hold down strap work better). The hold down strap sits about 1/16" above the brass bar that relocates the terminal. I don't love that. It seems ripe for a short from a dropped screw or washer. I think I'll pull the strap off and paint some plastidip over that brass bar.
I used 2 AWG welding wire for the positive and negative battery connections.
My wire connectors arrived this afternoon, which allowed me to finish up the switch wiring. The last thing to do before pulling everything off the panel and painting is to figure out the length of the switch wire harness. I put the panel back in the plane to sort that out.
I decided to make the harness really close to the exact length necessary vs adding in extra length for a service loop. The area behind the panel is going to fill up very quickly, and for a harness this simple, I don't think the extra wire is necessary. If there's ever an issue and I need to replace wires, the access is not a problem and swapping wires would be pretty easy.
The remaining switches either don't run through the ACM (ex: PMags and Master) or tie into other connectors on the ACM (the passenger PTT and starter switch). All of that can be done with the panel in place. I pulled all of the switches out, so now I'm ready to prime and paint the panel. If the weather holds tomorrow, I might actually get that done! My dry transfer labels are supposed to arrive early next week, but I'll give the paint a week or so to cure before I start messing with the labels.
