Fuel valve
The stock fuel valve is a pretty weak operating/looking unit. It does not have a firm or positive operation, and without labels you cannot tell if the thing is on or off. For something like the fuel system, I will pay a premium to have quality components. So, I had to take off the old one (more negative progress). It's pretty straightforward to loosen the fuel lines, but to get the thing out it's a pain because of the location - it sits sort of between the seat pans and in front of the spar, so it's hard to access from outside the plane.
No pictures of the new valve yet, but I'm going to order it soon and here's a link to the product. Much more impressive - can't wait to get it.
Electrical tray
Looking at other blogs and a local friends, it seemed like a good idea to put the electrical fuses on a drop down panel. I fabricated a drop down tray that attaches from the subpanel to the instrument panel. Of course, nothing is simple and there is a section of the subpanel that has some overlap. To compensate, I added a small trim piece so it would sit flush.
You can also see I had to drill out a rivet on the subpanel sections. It was bent over, and sure enough the hole was rounded out. I started looking around and noticed the subpanel was in pretty sorry shape. It had all sorts of holes in it and crappy edges. Here is what I'm talking about:
Anyway, it was clear this was not up to my standards and I was going to rebuild this section with new parts. I'll order them with my new fuel valve. Since this whole structure was coming out, might as well only temporarily fit up the drop down panel. It will be riveted when the new subpanel is installed.
Here it is temporarily installed
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