Starting with the easy task...First, I need to find a way to hold all these fiddling little pieces. Here I fabricated a little aluminum bracket and pop-riveted it onto the Y-tube. This tube feeds two eyeball vents that pour hot or cold air onto the occupants' laps.

It goes here...just forward of the avionics rack in the center of the panel.

Next, I made another bracket for a two-way valve used to send air to either the defrost vent or the two eyeball vents mentioned above.

...make another bracket, and it can be screwed into place. As much as I hate nutplates, this whole area becomes inaccessible or nearly so once the top skin is riveted on. I learned that the hard way, while contorted into unnatural positions under Dave Abrahamson's panel. So nutplates will hopefully render future maintenance possible, if not comfortable.

The forward-most valve is a hot/cold air selector. It's followed by a shutoff valve. All these damn valves need push-pull cables...that's the hard part.

...but first, the easy part. Since the control cables have to worm their way around those huge SCAT hoses, I figured I should install them first. This one takes air from the vent/defroster selection valve to the Y-tube.

This short one connects the hot/cold/shutoff valve assembly to the vent/defroster selection valve.

While I was in the neighborhood, I installed the cable for the parking brake valve. The first of FIVE such cables.

That's the parking brake handle on the left, with the T-shape. It's one of those twist-to-lock cables. The other four are just push-pull cables. They have enough friction that I don't think vibration will cause them to move much. That knob on the right is for the "stock" Van's heater valve. If experience in Pipers is any indication, that valve is great at roasting your ankles while the rest of you freezes.

The cable goes from the knob panel on the center console up to this rib, where an Adel clamp holds it. All of this is going to be removed shortly to enable other work to take place, so that's why it all looks a bit hacky. I'm just trying to get the bracketry, lengths, and hole locations right.

It then dives down to the firewall (held by another Adel clamp,) and then to the heater valve. All of these cables, by the way, are terminated in a B-nut. Cool little gizmos.

More and more knobs. You can also see the eyeball vents starting to show up on either side of the center console. I'm experimenting with painting the knobs to help tell them apart. I used to rent a Katana that had a bunch of nearly identical knobs next to one another. Parking break, carb heat, cabin heat, etc. Hated that. I read once that the F-104 was even worse: there were several identical T-handles in the panel close to one another. A careless pilot might reach down to, say, adjust the rudder pedals and instead jettison the canopy!

This cable goes to the vent/defrost valve. I had to build a little aluminum bracket to route the cable.

It's starting to get busy back there. Miraculously, the cables and hoses don't interfere.

The last control cable I added was the one that penetrates the firewall. It controls the hot/cold mixing valve. I used one of those $30 eyeball vents, drilled to take the casing of the cable. I know most builders install them the other way, with the eyeball facing outward, but this way gives a bit more room for the cable to move as the valve rotates. I don't think it matters. More bracketry! I'm trying not to wring my hands too much about weight, but, man...good thing it's forward of the CG.

So here we are...all five cables are installed and routed. The spacing is deliberately non-uniform (so don't write to point out my flaws!) The inner three are grouped close together because they're associated with the heinously complicated heater/defrost system...my self-inflicted wound.

And here it is from the pilot's view. I'm still trying to figure out the color scheme.