B&C OIL FILTER ADAPTER KIT and FS1-14B (Continued)

To use the B&C Oil Filter Adapter with the RV-10, one needs to use the 1.4" spacer kit in order to clear the engine mount. The 1.4" spacer kit comes with 4 new bolts of the proper length. This does mean that the one stud that was originally in the engine case needs to be removed in order to use the new (longer) bolt. While this should normally be an easy task (especially on a new engine), I could not get the stud to budge. You probably know where this is going, but I ended up breaking off the stud after a couple of attempts to double nut this thing out of here.



















At this point I only had 3/4 of a nut of thread length left. I could have put a vise grips onto this and hoped for the best, but in not wanting to have to drill out a stud I opted to weld a nut onto the stud.



In order to locally ground the nut and stud I put a vice grips onto the nut and grounded the vise grips. Based on the layout, the TIG arc jumped to the vise grips a couple of times which caused the smoke you see in the next photo.



All in all though, this worked out well. The stud still came out pretty tough, so I am glad I took this approach rather than risk getting the stud broken off flush.



With the stud out I could now install the spacer, adapter, filter, and alternator. PlanePower has listed right on their website that using spacers larger than .75" may interfere with the FS1-14. I could not find anyone that had any good photos of this combination, so figured "may interfere" would be workable.



As expected, the alternator does in fact interfere with the adapter (in two places). The first place is the safety wire ear on the adapter. This is not really that big of a deal because one could either clock the alternator differently, or grind off the ear (as there are two ears on the bracket).



The next interference point though is a bit more interesting. If you look at the top right bolt in the oil filter adapter you will see that it is perfectly lined up with the boss on the alternator. Each one of the four clocking positions of the alternator line each one of the 4 bolt bosses up with this bolt. A quick and easy fix for this would be to file 1/4" off of the boss. This part of the boss is not even threaded and I am pretty confident wouldn't hurt the structure of the alternator housing.



I debated this for a while, and I am going to scrap the idea of putting the 90 degree adapter on and keep the original straight oil filter housing. My mine thinking on this is two fold. One, the adapter does add another gasket and another place for oil to leak. More importantly though is if I went down the path of modifying the alternator housing, this means that if I ever needed to replace the alternator, that I would have to again make the modification. That is fine and dandy until you are on vacation stuck at some random airport hand filing down an alternator housing.

B&C OIL FILTER ADAPTER KIT and FS1-14B

With the engine still off it is a good time to get the backup alternator and 90 degree oil filter adapter. I ended up going with a Plane Power FS1-14B backup alternator. I am still working on my electrical system, but I am planning a two alternator two battery system. Only 1 alternator will be enabled at any given point in time and the selection will go back to a toggle on the panel for PRIMARY or BACKUP.

Original Oil Filter setup with the block off plate on the vacuum pad.

Removal of the block off plate

With the FS1-14B installed (temporarily)

There is actually a fair bit of room between the oil filter and the alternator. It does have me wondering if I need the 90 adapter or not. From the people who have gone down this path, it seems like everyone is on the same page that the oil filter without the adapter is a pain in the but to replace. It is just hard to see that at this point (when I have 360 access to the engine).

I already have the B&C adapter, although I did not purchase a space plate yet. I was not sure what size space I need so I figured I would fit everything up first and then take care of the spacer.