Wrap Up Work 2
9/10/2006 6 Hours
More wrap up stuff today. I went and forgot my camera though, so no pics today. I'll take some next time and post them. Doh!
My first job today was to make some little map light mounting plates. I'm using the cool LED lights available from SteinAir, but I'm mounting them under the lip above the armrests so they can't be knocked about and broken or bent up. All will become clear when I post a picture of this! Of course these little plates needed painting, so that prompted me to do a bunch more stuff that also needed painting....
I made the front spar covers that go in front of the seats. It wasn't a matter of just deburring these either. I had to put another bend in them at the bottom, about 3/4" up from the original bend due to the balsa sandwich floor that I put in the plane. They fit nice now. I put the plate nut on and prepped them for paint.
I also made the flap motor covers. These were easy. The last thing to make that needed paint were the side covers that run up the centre section channel. I match drilled and deburred them. They're ready for paint.
Out comes the paint gun. You all know by now how much I hate painting. I always put it off as long as I can, I hate it so much. Anyway, I primed all the parts, so they should be ready for some paint in a day or so. They came out OK too, which is somewhat amazing.
While that was drying, I moved back inside the fuselage and started insulating the firewall. I made a template of one of the outboard lower areas, and then cut out the self adhesive foam. The template actually worked out for all the areas on the firewall practically with just a minor modification. Again, a photo would help out a lot here.
I need to sort out the alternate air control knob, but I need to order up some bits from Spruce first. I didn't finish the firewall insulation for this reason.
I spoke with Blue Mountain last week, and I'm expecting to get our EFIS system back pretty soon. That means that we'll soon be ready to rivet that last skin on! I still need to prep it to!
9/14/2006 2 hours
I stopped off at the hangar to paint the parts I'd primed last Saturday. They actually look like they came out nice for a change.
9/17/2006 4 Hours
I didn't spend too much time at the hangar today, mainly because I had surgery on Friday afternoon - a bone graft in my sinuses for a tooth implant. I wasn't feeling up to much really. I did get some good things done though.
I mounted the map lights in the plane. This worked out really nice. They're neat little things.
Here's one mounted to the Pilot's side.
... And the Passenger side, a shot from underneath to show the mounting. You can loosen the thumb wheel and move the lamps where you need them too which is nice.
Next, I spent a bunch of time lifting the plane up and sorting out the wheel pant fairing brackets and the wheel nuts. I purchased a foot of heavy duty 7/8" pipe from Spruce to use as a jacking aid. I also went and got the modified wheelnuts from Avery to aid jacking this thing up. The whole contraption worked pretty good I have to say.
So, I lifted it up, figured out the fairing brackets, drilled all the holes in the fairing brackets ready to take the fairings, and reassembled the whole kaboodle. I borrowed (stole) some high temp bearing grease from Rick our local A & P so I could pack the wheel bearings good. Then, I mounted them and drilled the holes in the spindles for the cotter pins. Here's one all fitted and ready for flight!
An aid to drilling these holes for the cotter pin is to use a 12" #30 bit, put tape on the wheel to protect it from the bit rubbing, and let air out of the tyre so it's not in the way. Then drill the hole from each side of the nut. Take it all off, drill all the way through to make sure the hole is true, clean up the threads and reassemble it all. Worked out lovely.
Once I'd got both sides done, I re-attached the caliper and safety wired the two bolts for the outer pad.
The wheels and brakes are now ready for flight!
9/24/2006 7 hours
More wrapping up. This stuff seems to take up a heck of a lot of time, and it seems like I haven't done much. I also helped Larry roll some aluminium parts on my rollers for his friends aeroplane. It's good to help people out around the hangars every now and then. It helps build morale.
During the week, I took a few things to be powder coated at a place calle Exotic Coatings. I dropped them off on Tuesday, and Friday they called me to let me know that the stuff was done. Sweet! That meant I could get some things knocked off the list this weekend that was waiting for this stuff... Primarily the baffle seals. The Exotic Coating guys did a great job too. I took the baffle seal retaining strips and my roll over bar brace to be done flat black. Excellent people to do business with.
Here you can see one of the retaining strips. A while ago (you may remember), I found some baffle retaining screws at Aircraft Spruce. Today, I decided to just use the female half of the screws, and use the rivets that Van's supplied as the 'screw' part. I think that it's a lot stronger, and there's no chance that the crews will loosen. It also looks better than using a washer on the inside of the rivet. Fortunately, you can buy the female halves only from Spruce, so if you should decide to go this route, you won't be throwing away all the male halves of the screws!
Here's the outside. It turned out quite nice.
An overall shot of the baffle seals in place. I still need to make the front ones, but they won't take too long to do.
The next task I decided to take on was the ignition lead routing. For some reason, this took me practically the rest of the day. Messing around with Adel clamps is not my idea of fun. By the end of the day, my fingers were sore from trying to hold multiple clamps together while simultaneously trying to put a washer and nut on the bloody bolt. Aaargh! Quite a few nuts and washers ended up on the floor, or being fired across the hangar when I accidentally let go of the clamps!
Here you can see the left side. This was the easy part. I have since put waxed cotton ties on the leads too, to keep them together and neat and tidy like.
This was the first set of clamps for the right side. Ugh. Here we go. I managed to get a nice routing since I ordered these custom length leads from Skytronics.
I put another clamp on the lower bolt for the ignition lead grommet through the baffles there to hold the leads that go to 1 and 3 bottom plugs.
I also tied all the leads nicely with waxed cotton.
The last Adel clamp arrangement of the day. Luckily for me, Mike stopped by with beer, so he helped me get this thing together and we called it a day and chatted. It was good to see Mike again properly. The last time I saw him, we were chatting on the phone and we waved to each other from either side of the freeway as we were both travelling home from work in opposite directions!
For some reason at YIP we have a bit of a bird plague every day at a certain time. They all come, land pick in the grass and then leave! Very odd. Reminds me of Alfred Hitchcock!
This wrap up stuff goes on forever! Maybe I started it too early! Well, I got a call from Blue Mountain saying our EFIS CPU has had it's preflight calibration and check up, so it's on it's way. That means we have to work towards being in a position to put on that dreaded forward fuselage skin.
One of the first tasks was to hook up the alternate air cable. This cable runs forward through the firewall to the snorkel air intake where there is a door that can be pulled open in the event of an iced up or otherwise blocked air filter. I fabricated a bracket out of angle stock, and routed the cable. Then it was just a matter of connecting it up and moving on to the next task...
Here's the other end. The cable is held in place to each cylinder head with an adel clamp, just like the spark plug wires.
We put a shield on the grommet for the wiring. This is the main power cable plus a bunch of other wires.
Here I am trying to get at the bolts to secure the secondary battery. Not enough room to bend my hand in there....
So I ended up going in from underneath. Much easier. Speaking of which, Cam recommended I cleco on the top skin, and crawl under the panel there to see if I really can access everything I need to. That's probably a good idea, because once that skin is on....
I put this adel clamp on to secure some of the cables. Here's another thought based on Cam's suggestion... I should flip the screw and nut on this clamp, because I won't be getting a screwdriver in there with the skin on will I?
Here's the secondary battery.. This is outof order, because it's taken before I tightened the hold down bolts up.
I secured the biggest bunch of wires with another adel clamp. Again, I need to flip the screw and nut. Doh!
In the meantime, Clayton is fibreglassing the intake ramps to the cowling. I'm stealing your soul here Clayton! (He doesn't like to have his picture taken.)
Right then, here we go with the skin. It needed match drilling, so it had to be fully cleco'd on. Trying to get this thing to fit is no fun at all! It took a while, and with all those clecoes, my arm was aching! We got it match drilled, so next it was time to deburr and dimple. How many holes are there? Thank goodness for power tools. I probably should've gotten under there while this skin was on, but I didn't even think about it at the time. Oh well, I can kind of cleco it on and get under and see how bad it really is next weekend.
Here's the skin, match drilled, deburred holes, and dimpled where it needs to be done with the C-Frame dimpler. We left the edges until later as they can be squeezed. I just wanted to get all the others done while I had Clayton over as a helper.
I stopped off at the hangar tonight on the way home for the first time in ages. I spoke with Mike yesterday on the phone, and it looks like he may be available on Sunday to help me with riveting this skin on.
With that in mind, I finished dimpling the skin, and prepped all the ribs that it mates to by deburring and dimpling them. I also went around and double checked bucking bar access. Most places seem like they may be OK. I should get Mike to bring his collection with him, just in case.
The EFIS one arrived tonight, but I wasn't here to pick it up. I'll try to be home tomorrow for it. If not, I'll have to pick it up from the depot on Friday.