Brief Description: Installed the Starter Contactor
On the other end on the big fat battery cable will be the starter contactor - which I got installed tonight. This is the electrical "relay" device that will send juice to spin the starter and start the engine. The contactor works by electrifying a coil (with a separate starter switch) that pulls a plunger down to bridge a contact for the electricity to flow to spin the starter. In aerobatic airplanes like the RV-8, if it were mounted vertically, inadvertent G's could cause the plunger to "plunge" during high G maneuvers. This would spin the starter (a bad thing when the engine is already running) - so the trick is to mount the starter contactor horizontally so that +Gs and -Gs will not cause the contactor to make unwanted contact.
For the rear battery position, the starter contactor is installed on the firewall. Prior to installing it, I hooked it up to 12V and activated the contactor to see how it worked! It did, so I measured the location on the firewall, drilled out the holes and installed the bolts, washers and nuts. Then I torqued the nuts and called it a night.
