I did a lot of cypherin’ tonight and got one hole drilled for the cable that will activate the parking brake valve moving it from “on” to “off”. The first decision point is where do I want to place the pull handle? It can go almost anywhere so it is really a matter of personal choice and how one wants to run the cable from the pull handle to the parking brake. I decided that I would like it to be near the throttle quadrant so that it would be a natural step from engine off to parking brake on, and then also as a check when I go back to parking brake off before engine start-up. And although there is enough room between full forward throttle and a parking brake “pull” on, at least mentally it makes sense to have the parking brake knob full-forward before the throttle is advanced forward.
With the general location being settled on, I did some measuring for the best hand fit. I wanted the knob to be as low as possible to fit the run under the baggage area, but also it needs to be high enough above the throttle shelf for my fingers to get around it. With the push-button lock feature, the operation takes two fingers and a thumb to operate. I don’t want to get too far left toward the fuse wall, but too far right will possibly interfere with other items in the left gear leg tower, which is actually where the knob is being mounted. So I set up a shop table mock-up with a wood board being the side fuse wall and figured out the optimum left-right location.
Then to drill the hole … the aft side of the gear leg tower is accessible but the front part is partially blocked by the baggage compartment wall with space in between and I don’t want to drill a hole in the baggage area so I will have to think on that one. The other issue is that I can only get up to a ¼” drill bit in my angle drill attachment and a regular drill/bit won’t fit in the gear tower and my 12” long bits are not large enough as I need a 23/64” for the cable to fit in the snap bushing… we are part way there…
