I needed to do some maintenance on the aircraft, and Saturday’s weather forecast had a front coming through, with wind and showers, so I decided that this would be a maintenance day.

I removed the original, damaged, “round dial” airspeed indicator (ASI), and replaced it with a new one purchased from Van’s Aircraft. The advantage of buying one from Van’s is it is delivered with the correct coloured arcs and red and blue ticks to match the airspeed limits of your model RV.

I was very glad to have installed an openable door on the aft side of the forward baggage compartment. That door provides good access to behind the instrument panel. Even with the door, it is still a pain in the butt to replace instruments, unless you have a helper. I didn’t have a helper organized, so after removing the damaged ASI, I inserted the new one blind - fortunately it was the same make and model as the first one, so the flange was a tight fit in the hole, and that held it in place. I scurried around to the cockpit, and was amazed to see that through blind luck I had inserted it at the exact correct angle so the four holes in the ASI were perfectly lined up with the screw holes in the panel.

New pitot-static plumbing behind the instrument panelAfter replacing the ASI, I replaced all the quick-disconnect fittings in the pitot and static lines with Nylo-Seal fittings. I did a static system check, and found no leak at all in a one minute test. There was a very small leak in the pitot system, but it is way smaller than any pitot system leak limits I can find published.