Ironically, heat is what today's diatribe is all about. I used the SCAT flange supplied in the firewall forward kit to hook up the fresh air source for the cabin heat system. When I installed it, it sure looked kinda cheesy to me. It was welded (barely), but had all sorts of gaps, and it didn't seem like the best weld to me. But hey, it's from Van's, and it's on the plans...and the fresh air hose for the heat couldn't possibly impart that much force on this sucker. Well...if you follow the plans it does. When I got home from my trip yesterday I found the hose and tube side of the flange had just broken right off. (Here I had obviously removed the hose clamp already.)
Cheese!
Throw it out, or better yet, omit it from the firewall forward kit when you place your order. The one on the right is a six-dollar flange that I bought from Spruce today (P/N: 10350-8).
It's not welded (can't tell how it's made, but I don't care), and it's about twice as thick. Sure, it's a little heavier, but it's pretty much negligible in my book -- especially at this point.
Something else that has failed prematurely is my right strobe flasher tube. I called Van's about it, and they told me to call Whelen. An engineer at Whelen said that I should simply send it back to Whelen for repair or replacement. Instead, I bought a new one ($68 from Spruce, $60 from Van's, not cheap...) and still sent the old one back. When I get the repair back I'll have a spare. Anyway, it was nice that Whelen honors the warranty on what is essentially a "light bulb." Cool.
After installing and testing the new flasher tube, I put all this crap back in place and buttoned up the lens.
My GX60 is gone...well, temporarily. On a few flights, the thing has rebooted on me every few minutes. It's not a reproducible problem, though. I thought it might have to do with heat, but there have been some flights where the plane sat out in the brutal sun (i.e. Laughlin the other weekend) and experienced very hot in-flight temps and the problem didn't happen. I don't know what's up. Anyway, I first contacted John Stark about it, and he said to send it to him, and he would send it to Garmin for warranty repair. Let's hope for the best.
