Continuing on with Section 28, I had an EPIC priming day and got all of the outstanding items painted (including the last of my wing skins!)
With everything primed, I begin to do the final assembly on all the ribs and bulkheads for the forward fuselage. First step is dimpling all of the parts that will have flush head rivets, then installing rivets in all of the sub-components.
I then pull out my trusty DRDT-2 and begin to dimple the bottom wing skins (after I remove the plastic and deburr). Didn’t catch the larger skin being dimpled, but it’s in the background of my timelapse). I’m basically out of room to move in the garage so I’m about to have a moving day to get the wings into storage.
I then complete the dimpling of all of the other components (making sure I take the time to understand what does and does not get dimpled). Then it’s on to prepping the bottom skin so I can back rivet the ribs on. This was very easy and looks great once done. Even got a little assistance from my oldest while I was working on this part.
I decided to order some firewall sealant from skygeek vs using proseal to seal between the skin and the firewall. It looks very much like proseal in the tube, but has a very different consistency when applied to the surfaces. Almost has a foam type of quality to it? Anyway, with the sealant applied, I quickly squeeze those rivets then start to rivet the tunnel to the bottom skins.
My attempts to back-rivet these parts did not work as planned and I ended up drilling these rivets out I’ll need to call in some favors to help set these rivets before I join the fuse and hopefully move it to the cradle.
Continuing to work on Chapter 28, I begin by pulling the plastic off the interior of the forward bottom skin. After I figure out the rib orientation, I cleco all the parts together. Then adding the bulkheads and system brackets, final drilling per the plans as I progressed.
Before I attached the firewall and tunnel to the skins, I had to go back and rivet on the Rudder Pedal brace that I didn’t do in the previous chapter. Took a try or two before I was able to successfully get the rivets installed to my standards.
Next I join the firewall and tunnel assembly to the skins and then stand the whole section on the firewall (with wood scrap under the firewall to prevent the flanges from bending!). Gracefully climbing onto the workbench, I then final drill all of the remaining holes common to the firewall, tunnel, and bottom skin.
Then, the whole assembly is back on the skin (technically the celcos that are in the skin) so I can final drill the firewall to ribs. Small side note, I had already dimpled the firewall where it attaches to the ribs, but not the ribs. In hind-sight I could have waited to dimple this section of the firewall till later and used my squeezer. Hindsight is 20/20. This was obvious to me once I attempted to install the floor pans, so I ended up taking the firewall off and dimpling those ribs to match to ensure everything lined up correctly. I didn’t end up capturing this swearing session on video but it did happen 🙂 Once re-assembled, the floor pans went in fairly easily (they are tight and almost a friction fit).
Then it’s on to installing the forward spar. I put some cribbing under the skins to support the spar as it is quite heavy. Match drill the holes called out in the plans, and install the temporary bolts to hold everything together. Not too difficult.
After some off-camera shuffling of items in the garage, I have my wife assist me in lowering the aft fuselage onto a workbench and I being the process of the initial mating of the forward and aft fuselage. Super exciting as you get these somewhat large parts mated together. I had to use lumber to lift the aft end of the fuse to allow the spar bolt holes to line up enough to get my Home Depot Aviation Department temporary bolts to fit. I bought 2 sets of temporary bolts. One set to for just this step. The other will be sanded down into bolt alignment pins for later in the build. I’m only going to install the “final” bolts and nuts once as I don’t want to damage them / purchase a second set if I don’t have to.
With everything connected, I did all the final drilling called out in the plans, crawled between the tables to final drill the skin to spar holes, then had to take the whole forward fuse apart so I could deburr and prime.
So as I began to think ahead and read mods that others had done / suggested, I came across a number of posts talking about the need for an access panel into the forward fuse tunnel so you can easily get access to fuel filters for condition inspections and maintenance. I thought this made a lot of sense and decided that I also needed to include this mod in my build.
Decided to order two of the kits from Airward, Inc. This was really just some pre-cut sheet metal as well as a handful of hardware (rivets, nutplates, and screws) to install the tunnel access panel. I’m sure I could have created one on my own, but figured the pre-cut kit would have better cut lines, etc.
Initially I have only installed one of the access panels on the passenger side of the tunnel. I have seen plenty of others that installed both, I’m trying to decide if I really need access from both sides yet.
The instructions are mostly straightforward. It was slightly unclear how far forward / aft to install. I just made a judgement call and moved ahead. Also I noticed that the pre-drilled holes on the doubler (part of the reason I purchased this kit) didn’t fully align with the pre-drilled holes from Vans. 🙁 As I final-drilled, some of my holes are now out of round on the doubler. This isn’t a huge problem as I’m going to be installing some angle aluminum behind the doubler at this location for my Fuel system install.
Location of access panel
Drilling the remaining #40 holes
With the doubler plate match drilled along the bottom row of pre-drilled holes, I then match drill the remaining #40 holes around the outside of the doubler. Then, you drill the four corner screw holes, cleco the access panel into those holes and draw the access panel outline. Then it’s a matter of using a strep drill and your tool of choice to cut out the access panel hole.
Draw the outline of the access hole you need to cut out.
Use a step-drill to enlarge the holes
Use your tool of choice to cut out the rough opening
Rough cuts
Success, you now have a hole!
Clean up the edges, cleco the doubler in place and test fit the access panel. This will take a little bit of trial and error so your access panel opening matches the access panel. Once you think you have it looking good, then install the hardware on the doubler for the nutplates, Clean and prime everything, then install the doubler (except the for bottom row of rivets until you are ready to install the cabin floor. )
So I haven’t been posting a lot of updates recently as the end of summer ends up being a very busy time of year. Sorry about that. Progress is sorta being made and I’m doing a lot of jumping around between sections.
Currently I have mostly completed chapter 27 (Firewall) and working on section 28. I have also finished and tested both fuel tanks and now have them mounted on the wings (more in a moment). I’m getting quite space limited in my garage and trying to get the wings to a place where I can move them into longer term storage so I have a little bit more room to work. Hopefully I can line up some help in the next few weeks as well as a U-haul to make this happen.
Because I’m bouncing between sections and getting to loose ends, things sometimes get overlooked. Like when I dimpled the top of the gap fairing for the right wing, but forgot to dimple or countersink the 6 holes for the AN426AD4-8 rivets, and didn’t realize till I have riveted all the other rivets to the wing. Nothing to do but drill out ALL of those rivets, fix my problem and re-rivet everything back together.
Since I needed access to the top of the wing to drill those rivets out and both wings were in the cradle, I needed to enlist help to move the wings (one at a time) to a table to get access. Since I had access, I also decided it was time to mount the fuel-tanks to the wings. After starting to mount the first tank, I realized I didn’t countersink the holes deep enough on the spar. More clean-up work to ensure everything sat flush. It’s all little stuff, but it does take time.
Currently I still need to prime and dimple the bottom skin for the right wing, then I’m ready for both wings to go to storage as I’m not going to rivet the bottom skins on till I’m in a hangar and ready to mount the wings.
Last night my wife was able to assist me in getting more riveting done on the Mid Fuse bottom skins. Things were going great but at one point I got a weird feeling something wasn’t right. As we kept riveting, it finally hit me and I stopped riveting. One of the ribs seemed different and when I went back to look, I realized it was. Somehow I didn’t dimple one of the ribs and I was missing dimples on a few holes on the adjacent rib.
Rib was not dimpled prior to installation. Time to drill out rivets
Notice the bottom 5 holes have on this rib were not dimpled. UGH!!!
Drilling out a large portion of the bottom skin to address my mistake.
Not sure how the heck that happened, but it is what it is. As I’m looking at it and trying to decide just how big this F**k up is, I slowly told myself to own my problems and fix it. Plenty of people today don’t want to talk about or embrace the mistakes they make. Social media posts celebrate the best moments, blah blah blah. Nope, that’s not me. I’m the guy that will crack a joke at my own expense and has no problem pointing out all the mistakes I make along the way. Not only do I point out my mistakes, I also do my best to fix them. Sorry, got on my “soapbox” for a moment.
With all of that said, I resigned myself to drilling out dozens of rivets so I can get a squeezer into the space between the skin and the rib so I can dimple the ribs I missed earlier. I ended drilling out a significant number of rivets to allow me to get my squeezer access to those ribs. Emotionally painful, but not a huge deal. Dimple the ribs, then bribe my lovely wife to re-rivet the skins back on. Overall, very happy with the results.
Progress riveting the bottom skin
Ribs successfully dimpled!
Sorry, no time-lapse of this work as it was just nothing but riveting.
So the title of this section is long, as it should be. There is a lot going on in this section. Basically building up all the parts between the wing spar and the firewall and then attaching the mid-fuse to the fwd fuse.
First few steps in this chapter are building the FWD seat rails and the attach angle to the tunnel. I believe there is a slight difference between the F-1043C angle and what is depicted in the plans (plans show extra holes that aren’t in the actual part). Just ignore this and keep building. (At least that’s what I did!) Beyond that, this is an easy cleco parts per plans, final drill, countersink where needed, (prime if you want), then assemble.
The only suggestion I can provide at this stage is rivet the ribs together before you install the nutplates. I didn’t and it was a little more difficult to set the rivets to hold the ribs together. Ended up having to use a modified rivet set that was shaved down to get access to the factory head as the nutplates were in the way.
With the seat rail ribs assembled, you can then begin to assemble the jigsaw that is the FWD Fuselage Bulkhead sub-assembly. Lots of pieces bolted together with assorted nutplates and clecos. Honestly this was a little fun trying to put it together. Presented a little bit more of a mental on how everything goes together. Another item to note, the plans don’t tell you to do it but final drill all the screw holes on the F-1043D cover plate. The pre-punched holes are too small for the AN515-8R8 screws and they won’t thread in correctly.
I will say cutting the column control mount bracket was slightly scary. I always feel like I have to be so precise with things like this and I really won’t know if I really messed it up for quite a while. Fingers crossed that I was “close enough”.
Other than that, not too hard, just a lot of spacial thinking to get everything together. After building one side, the other goes together much faster!
Looking ahead I really need to get my mid-fuse bottom skin riveted on soon as that needs to be done before I try to attach it to the FWD fuse. Hopefully I can get that done somewhat soon. Also things are getting REALLY crowded in my garage now. I have been thinking I need to move my wings somewhere else, but need to work out the logistics.
