After 135 hours, the plane is flying great. I have taken over 30 different people flying, and been to southern Florida. Here are my findings.
1. The plane is handling flawlessly. I am having a great time burning up fuel.
2. I still have a couple of electrical gremlins running around, but I am not going to tackle them until the weather warms up.
3. I have had the Vettermans exhaust mounts break several times. I kept fixing by replacing parts, but I finally came up with a permanent solution.
Below, is a picture of the original design, then to the right, a broken piece. Basically a stainless steel tube, flattened at the end with a drilled hole for the bolt to go through. The mount breaks at the spot where the metal has weakened from flattening. In my hand is the broken piece. 4 of these have busted on me. Just to the right of my hand is the new piece. Same tube, same bend, but no flattening with a hole drilled. I just used an adel clamp to affix the tube to the exhaust.
Here are 2 pics of a fixed mount. So far so good on this.
4. The gear leg fairings, along with chopping off 4" of exhaust have given me about 8 mph. I am now doing 200mph with the throttle to the wall. Much better but I am still not satisfied. I will soon move several antennae's ( I have 9) either completely off the plane, or inside somewhere somehow. I want to see 210mph at sea level before I give up finding more speed out of her.
5. Did I mention that she is flying great?
End of report.