Whelen 650 install on a J

[bmcconnaha]

Hopefully not a redundant post.  I tried searching but didn’t have much success with that I’m after. Looking for some photos or Pireps of the install guide for installation of the 650s on the J with the enclosed wingtips.  Did the factory wires for the new LED light prove long enough, or did you have to add some length? Also, went with a third strobe on the tail.  How hard was it to add the sync wire?  Thanks in advance

[carusoam]

The search function may have an answer, but...

Let’s see if the Whelen guy can answer that...

@OSUAV8TER

Best regards,

-a-

[OSUAV8TER]

Installation should not be more than a few hours using your existing wiring. I have not received feedback from Mooney customers that the factory wiring was too short, it should be fine if they can reach out to the existing wiring. As for running new wiring, it should also not prove to be a major challenge to run new wire with a snake through the existing structure.

https://www.gallagheraviationllc.com/whelen-aircraft-lighting.html <--- Buy Whelen lighting here.

[Warren]

Just installed these on a M20k 231 (1985) - enclosed wingtips.

1.  The mount on the wingtip needs to be modified for the hole pattern of the new lights as the holes do not line up.  Then there are some holes to cover so it is not trivial to make it look clean.  I need to do a little additional work to clean up my assembly. And finish covering up the remaining holes.  This is the most time intensive and depends on how clean you want to make it look.

2.  The wiring on the 1985 K model has 4 wires to wing tips and tail.  Power and ground to a nav light and power and ground to the strobe — able to use one of the grounds as the sync wire and no need to add additional wires.  Nav wires were easily long enough to connect.  Strobe wires had to be spliced/extended at the strobe power supply location to extend to the mounting location.  Check your wiring diagram to see if this is the case with your plane.  I also looked at a 1979 K and it had provisions for sync from wing to wing but not to the tail - maybe not worth the expense to sync the tail as it is painful to take out the interior panels to run a wire to the tail for sync.

3.  Tail mount was pretty easy bolt on and wire splice.

4.  All wires come back to a connector under the dash.  Was able to leave the airframe side of the connector alone and connect the sync wires on the switch side of the connector.

[ArtVandelay]

If you install the tail beacon/strobe, did you remove rudder and rebalance it?


Tom

[mhrivnak]

I recently installed these (OR6502GE, OR6502RE) on my 1990 MSE in addition to the tail fixture (OR5002V).

Mounting: for me, all the holes lined up. The only challenge was finding longer screws to attach the tail light.

I found that both wings had shielding for all the original wiring to both wing tips, which is great because I'm planning to add a magnetometer soon in the right wing. The Strobe and Position circuits each had their own ground wire that ran all the way to the panel. So I re-purposed the strobe ground wires as my sync wires and did not have to run any new wires through the wings.

The strobe power supplies were in the wings a couple of feet inboard of the tips. Each had two conductors coming in from the panel, then three conductors going out to the light. After removing the power supplies, I spliced the two conductors from the panel to two of the three conductors that ran from there to the new LED fixture. Then I used those two conductors as sync and strobe power. I wanted to remove that short run of 3-conductor wire that went from where the old power supplies were and replace it with a 2-conductor run, but it proved quite challenging. At the wing tips, all the conductors going out there come through an Amp circular connector that's impossible to access without removing rivets. Oh well, I'll live with a few extra feet of decommissioned wire in the wing tips.

I ran a new 2-conductor shielded wire from the panel to the tail for position power and sync. Previously my rear position lights were on the rear of the wing tips, so there was no pre-existing position light wiring to the tail. I joined the three sync wires under the panel. Where the strobe power supply was in the tail, I spliced into the three conductors running from there to the tail light and used them for ground, strobe power, and position power. Fishing a new sync wire through that section of tail components was tricky, but I got it to work.

I replaced the 4-pin Amp circular connector in the tail with a new 9-pin connector so I could add a 5th pin for sync. I also used 4-pin molex connectors at each light fixture just to make life a little easier the next time a fixture has to be removed or replaced.