First night flight and issues

[n982sx]

I see Jeff has beat me too it but,

Nutplates, nutplates, nutplates. The best advice I ever got was just before mounting all the firewall forward components and it was to use nutplates to attach everything. They came in handy before I even finished building and changing out firewall components during the 400 hours on the plane has been a snap.

All in all, using nutplates on the firewall took less than four hours to install and cost less than $20. I don't remember who suggested I use them, but I have been passing the word on ever since.

[Titanium Cranium]

Some good news, some bad news:

The good news is that the new regulator seems to have fixed the charging issue. I made a new bracket that I riveted to the bottom of the filler neck pocket and bolted the regulator there. Hopefully getting the regulator away from the firewall will improve the airflow and cooling for the regulator. My battery was reading 12.55 volts prior to start-up, and after warm-up, I was reading 12.8 volts at WOT and 12.1 at idle. 12.8 volts seems lower than what others have said they get, but I did some research and found that my plane has the old 10 amp alternator/stator, so I think that's about right. The fact that I'm getting readings consistent with the rate the engine is running suggests that the charging system is working now.

The bad news is that my tachometers are just reading 0 now. I don't know how that would possibly be related to the regulator, so it's either coincidence or I disturbed a connection to something else when I unplugged the 3 wires from the regulator. I'll have to take a look at the wiring and trace both of my tachs to the probe to check the connections. I can't imagine it's anything much more complicated than a bad connection to the probe if neither tach is getting a reading. I just need to figure out where the pick-up is for the tachs in my plane.

[sonex1374]

The tach is likely getting alternator pulses from the stator coil and converting that to rpm. If so, the easiest place to get this is where the stator wires attach to the regulator. Since only 1 leg of the regulator is connected directly to the AC voltage in the stator, only that one leg will give you pulses. If you're not getting pulses, try moving your tach wire to the other leg of the regulator.

Jeff

[MichaelFarley56]

I agree 100% with Jeff. There was a lead wire connected to one of the regulator tabs that served as a tach pickup for your MGL system. Find it and reinstall it in the same place on the new regulator. You should be good to go!