I’m planning to try and turn this into a throttle control for simming while hopefully keeping as many original parts/functions intact.







All the guts present, only extra part I needed was ignition/cutoff microswitch which I just installed today (found correct vintage microswitch on ebay after looking up part number in F-86 Maintenance manual - tested it with SVMapper and it works ) See video link in next post.

Here are most of the guts:



Pots are for manual gunsight ranging.

Here are the microswitches for the flap lever:






So my first question is does anyone have any experience with Mil Spec connectors/cannon plugs?

Here is the male side with the pins (7)




Female side enroute via eBay.

I have the wiring diagram but I’m no expert... do these connectors use a common ground?

Thanks in advance everyone! Hopefully I can get this thing to work while keeping as many original parts as possible.

Short video showing the micro switch that controls the ignition and boost pumps during engine start/shut down. The throttle lever is sprung to the inboard edge of the channel it moves within. A tab on the rear of the lever holds the micro switch plunger in when the throttle is in the OFF position. When starting, you push the throttle outboard to energize the pumps and ignitors (micro switch plunger out) before moving it forward around the idle gate.

Micro Switch

That's going to be a cool project, keeping an eye on this

Marc..

Wow, over a year and a half since I started this thread.... well, I have definitely been busy with work and life, but here’s an update:

Have been working on switch boxes for my F-86 cockpit project, mostly everything complete, some wiring housekeeping to be done and of course printing out switch labels soon with the correct font. Cockpit chassis is an Obutto R3volution.




As for the throttle, I couldn’t get the cannon plug wiring to work for me so I made the decision to yank the original wiring harness and rewire the switches in the grip. Speed brakes, Microphone PTT, and gun sight electrical cage button as well as flaps up/down functions all work.

Cutoff microswitch activated by throttle arm when pulled aft of the idle stop also works well.




Next steps are to figure out how to get the throttle itself wired to a potentiometer (I’m leaning towards a push rod moving a slider right now), and building a frame the throttle quadrant can sit in that can be bolted on to my cockpit chassis. Thinking about wood since I can’t weld and have mostly hand tools to work with.

Once that’s all done I’ll try to see if I can get the original pots working for the manual ranging control (throttle twist) working. I may have to replace the ancient pots with new ones, should only need one rotary pot and maybe a new microswitch (switches between automatic and manual ranging functions - opens when you start twisting the throttle grip, grip is spring loaded to return to close switch and switch back to auto) if the original doesn’t work.