Mark Riley's Velocity Build: Repairs and Upgrades

You may remember from the last post on the flight to Maryland, I had an alternator failure. The red light in the panel in the shot above is the alternator failure warning light. I flew back home on the back up systems, and confirmed that the voltage regulator on my alternator was shot.

I pulled the alternator and decided to replace it. That's where the fun began. It is a 60 amp automotive alternator made by Denso. The good news is that they are very reliable, powerful, and cost only $130, 1/4 the cost of an aviation alternator. The bad news is that there are hundreds of models and the model sticker on mine had fallen off somewhere over the years.

I spent hours on line looking for the identical one, checked with the guys at NAPA and other parts dealers, but couldn't find the exact one to fit my mount. I ended up having it rebuilt, which was about the same price as buying a factory rebuilt one.

___________________________________________________________________

My shiny good as new rebuilt alternator a week later.

________________________________________________________________

Lower cowling off and ready for the new alternator.

_____________________________________________________________

Since I had taken the time to wire in an automotive attach plug, reinstallation was, literally a snap.

Partly hung. Note the custom plug ready to attach.

Installed and reconnected. Just needs to be safety wired.

Back view.

_______________________________________________________________

Next up, I needed to replace a faulty line to my air/oil separator. There is a pressure relief valve in the line that sends oil out a vent on the bottom of the cowl if the line gets blocked. This was a retrofit after an RV driver blew out his engine when a fitting coked up. The problem was that I was still getting lots of oil on the cowl. The relief valve had obviously failed. We traced the problem to the O rings, which don't like Cam Guard additive I use. They were replaced with Vyton rings, which solves the problem. I got the replacement part for free and installed it in a few minutes. Good customer service from Antisplat Aero.

_____________________________________________________________

Next up will be a new nose gear leg. My vintage kit (mid 90's) had a taco weld in the support gusset that can crack and fail. This requires constant inspection. At Oshkosh this year I helped replace one on the field for another Velocity pilot after he had a hard landing on arrival. I decided to replace mine after John Abraham agreed that I might have the beginnings of a crack. I ordered one from Velocity and was impressed by the finish and by the heavy new gusset. Here are some pictures.