I heard from the factory that my Engine, Firewall Forward Kit, and Upholstery is on it's way. It's a pretty big and heavy mix of items, so they had to put them in a container and on a boat - 6-8 weeks delivery time... ugh. Looks like a September timeframe for delivery with an order that I put in January.
So I'm doing a mix of odds and ends, torquing bolts, kicking tires, etc..
This week I focused on fixing things I made mistakes on or that were quick and easy.
Phew! That was a lot.. looking forward to moving on to digging into the avionics a bit more next week! One of the more taxing exercises I’ve had on the project so far is getting the control rods to move smoothly.
The vesconite bushings are a perfect fit on the control torque tubes, but when placed in the aluminum ribs and there a slight misalignment or misshaped curve, the result is a binded bushing. Which can be hard to find. I spent quite a bit of time using a flap sanding wheel to trim down the ribs to get a nice fit on the bushings. Then when in place with the brackets I had to find the rib that was slightly misaligned and sanded down the bushing a bit to get it unbinded. Once that was done, riveted the brackets in place and tested everything out.. minimal friction! After that was done, I decided to put the luggage floor Rivnuts in place and test fit the covers. Perfect fit! Today I worked on installing the seatbelts. Unspooling the belts was a challenge since the locking mechanism is gravity sensitive. Meaning, there’s a ball in the spool that has to be oriented a specific way for the spool to release. Once I figured that out, unspooling the belt was pretty easy.
The kit didn’t come with the penny washers that are in the instructions, but did come with some M8 penny washers that seemed to be close enough. I also see there’s some seat belt centering bushings, but I’m not sure where those go. I have a question out to the factory. I also put together another floor panel that covers the flap and elevator controls torque tube assembly under the front seats. Now I just need to start installing the numerous M4 Rivnuts in the center fuselage, an item I’ve been putting off due to it just being a laborious task... Update 1/31/20: I received word from the factory that there is a steel bracket that is already embedded into the canopy. The CAD drawing of the bracket is below. I enlarged the hole a bit and finally was able to see the bracket. The factory initially included 2 right flaps in my kit due to some mislabeling. They were able to ship me that along with some other small parts that were missing.
Kinda fun to rivet something again, oddly enough. The flap went together within an hour since I already had the ribs prepared and I knew what I was doing. Once that was done I fit it to the wing along with the aileron I had already done, except for the riveting leading edge. I made sure they alignment was good and riveted the leading edge of the flap while on the wing. From there, I checked alignment with the aileron and the wing tip. It required some maneuvering. I put in one rivet in the center of the leading edge of the aileron and checked again. Made another adjustment, added a rivet, made another adjustment.. getting harder now. And placed the third rivet in. Now it was pretty much secure and aligned! Went ahead and did the rest and it turned out great. From there I connected the pushrods to the aileron and flaps, bolted, applied blue loctite and torqued. On to other things! I'm quickly running out of inventory on my shelves!
I'm kinda glad I pulled the trigger on the avionics, I just hope it doesn't take the whole 3-4 months of lead time to get everything in. That would mean some down time, unfortunately. I started working on the Throttle and Brake Controls to get them mostly assembled. I am keeping the center console channel undone for a while so I can run wires, but I figure I might as well get parts pre-assembled and out of bags. The brake and throttle went together easily, but it looks like I'm missing some parts. Of course they are small things, like one Castle Nut and one Bolt Bushing used for the throttle cable. Speaking of missing parts, I did get a shipment in from Aircraft Spruce with some bolts I needed to finish up the front seat and the rudder pedals! Nice to finally check those off my list. |
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