Steve,
My two batteries are mounted on the engine
side of the firewall. I presume yours is mounted in the cockpit? I had
not considered a loose connection inside the battery. I plan to clean up
all the connections outside the battery.
I have had a VOM connected to the supply
side of the transponder when it went off and I did not see any fluctuation in
the voltage when that happened. Several folks have suggested that I have
a grounding issue so I am cleaning all of them up. I previously replaced
both the power and ground wires to the transponder but that had no affect.
I am not certain how to check each ground
wire going to the forest of tabs. Anybody have a suggestion?
Bill B
From: Rotary motors in aircraft
[mailto:flyrotary@lancaironline.net] On
Behalf Of Steven W. Boese
Sent: Saturday, December 08, 2012
4:52 PM
To: Rotary
motors in aircraft
Subject: [FlyRotary] Re: Aeroquip
hose
Bill,
From your description, your ground
architecture sounds very similar to mine. I have the forest
of tabs bolted to the firewall with a brass bolt. On the cabin side,
the battery ground is connected to this bolt. Everything else grounds to
the forest of tabs. On the engine side of the firewall, the engine ground
is connected from the front (in the car) cover to that brass
bolt. My arrangement has not had any electrical problems that I am
aware of.
I also have a stainless wire braid covered fuel
line from the firewall bulkhead fitting to the fuel rail on the engine. I
have seen no damage to it. The fact that your wire braid on the fuel line
has been burnt suggests that it might have intermittently served as the
engine ground at one time or another. The braid must not have conducted a
large current for very long or it would been destroyed completely. I
can't think of a worse place to have an uncontrolled resistance heater than on
that fuel line. Verifying the integrity of the ground from the engine to
the airframe and from the battery to the airframe certainly seems like
a worthwhile endeavor.
Depending on the details of the alternator
installation, an intermittent connection inside the battery also might be a
possibility although this would not explain the damage to the fuel line braid.
FWIW
RV6A, 1986 13B NA, RD1A, EC2