The Cessna 120-140 Association Forum

So when I replaced my rudder, the tail beacon wire that comes out of the rear fuselage sprang back into the hole (I had to cut the wire at the rudder since the previous owner never added a connector). The old wire was also too short anyway and is original wire, thus brittle and in poor condition. Which leaves me with the fun task of running new wire from the exit hole near the vert. stab., to the buss up front.

My plan is to run new, shielded 20 AWG stranded wire (which matches what's there). My question to the group is: Is there any easier way to run the wire except to crawl into the "hell hole" (the tail cone), alllllllll the way to the last bulkhead, and hand-thread the new wire through that tiny access hole in the bulkhead, and then through all the little wire holders along the left side of the fuselage (right, if you're looking toward the tail)? Is there something I can remove to be able to feed the initial length through that darned bulkhead (the holes are really tight for an arm to reach in).

Marc,

Is the existing wire attached to the sides of the internal part of the fuselage? Reason that I ask, my airplane has tiny clips that support the wire as it is routed to the tail. Your airplane however, may be different. Curious.

6183 wrote: ↑Fri Aug 30, 2024 5:40 pm Marc,

Is the existing wire attached to the sides of the internal part of the fuselage? Reason that I ask, my airplane has tiny clips that support the wire as it is routed to the tail. Your airplane however, may be different. Curious.

Yes. There are clips along the side. I ended up doing the work the old fashioned way: My son (who is skinnier and far more limber than I) crawled into the tail cone. I fished him the wire using mason wire from home depot (it worked BEAUTIFULLY). He grabbed it and carefully threaded it into the first tiny hole in the last bulkhead, then hand-fed it through those clips. We pulled about 20 feet all the way up to the bus and just replaced the entire wire. Worked great, but MAN was that a lot of work. And in the Arizona heat, it was less than ideal. But it's done.

From the lack of responses in this group to my post, I imagine there are no easier ways. Removing the horizontal stabilizer was not something I wanted to take on either. This was the easiest way.

I always said that every owner should spend some time in his or her own tailcone. When I was younger, I did.

I also sacrificed my kid to do tail cone duty for clean up and help with the installation of a pull handle and a few other odds and ends. Helps

A little late now.............having done that, I used A. Two people (lucky dawg outside and me......un-lucky dawg inside) B. Welding rod gets wire up to the 2nd to last bulkhead(even with the front of the vertical fin), sorry I didn't see this earlier, could have saved you a little bit of sweat.

V529 wrote: ↑Tue Sep 10, 2024 8:56 pm A little late now.............having done that, I used A. Two people (lucky dawg outside and me......un-lucky dawg inside) B. Welding rod gets wire up to the 2nd to last bulkhead(even with the front of the vertical fin), sorry I didn't see this earlier, could have saved you a little bit of sweat.

Never too late. I have kept a note on your suggestion. Thank you!

Haha!……….not much fun! Sorry I’m just reading this post now, but I had to crawl to the rear bulkhead at least 25 times recently. The tail pull mounted in there is a bonus. A couple weeks ago, I added a tailBeaconX, so I had to run a shielded twisted pair back to the beacon. I also replaced the power wire since it was in bad shape. The problem is, the wires are clamped to the inside top of the rear fuselage. The only access is through the lightening hole at the top of the rear fuselage. The horz stab had to be removed. While in there, I noticed the lower elevator cable was in bad shape, so I also replaced that (stab needs to be removed to replace this cable, unlike the upper one). Big job, but so far it’s working with the AV-30.