- started to add upholstery - rear golf cubby hole as a test for carpets - center console leather - rear passenger heat routing - bled brake lines - filled the fuel tanks! I’d recommend Wurx Containers.. saw them on Trent Palmer’s channel and he even has a discount code. 👍 I am working to finish up the firewall forward electrical and any final placement of the wires that will be covered once I put the front fiberglass piece on.
I had to reroute some of the heater ducting and also remembered to attach the heater control cable. I also routed the brake line through the firewall forward gromet. One thing to note, and I've heard about this from another builder, the bottom muffler bracket that mounts over the muffler shroud is a manufactured incorrectly - it's a bit too big. The fix is to shave off some of the metal where the bolt joins them, maybe a quarter inch total. It didn't take too long with a grinder and it fit just fine afterwards. I decided I might as well get to doing Service Bulletin 17, which has me replace the aluminum rivets in the elevator control stops to stainless steel. To do so, I had to remove the ribs in the center console that hold down the elevator torque tube. After that, drilling the rivets out was easy with a flexible 90 degree drill bit.
The service bulletin didn't specifically specify, but I decided to use some anti-corrosive on the stainless steel rivets since it will be in contact with a dissimilar metal. I was not fully satisfied with the stiffness of my elevator and wanted to make sure it was butter smooth this time. While I had the elevator ribs out, I decided to give them a good shaving around the area that holds the torque tube bushing with a dremel. I tried fitting a few times and sanded a bit more. I finally got it to where there's zero resistance! Definitely happy I got that resolved. Before you install the side panels, the factory suggests using some high density foam to block open areas in the rear passenger air channel. I couldn't find any decent foam blocks, so I decided to get some polyurethane based foam. It did the trick and shaving it to size was easy with a hand saw. Next I moved on to starting to wire up the canopy for the front and rear lights. There's a tube that routes from the back left of the cockpit through the canopy and exits in the center between all the light holes. Not too easy to see in there, so I used a wireless borescope to understand what I'm working with. I had to punch some holes through the styrofoam in the canopy to get the wires through to the front pilot light areas. The rear passenger lights were easy since the tubing routes by the hole. I'll put on a protective sleeve on the wires that exit the canopy and route them below the rear seat for connection to the harness. 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! With the goal of clearing some inventory from the shelves, I picked up some components that were relatively quick to install.
The flap actuator is held on by two bolts, so I placed it in there and temporarily secured it. I am having some friction issues on the control tubes while secured in the frame.. will need to trim the brackets that hold the bushings a bit to make them move without much effort. Saving that exercise for another day. For the heater, I measured and drilled the mounting rivnut locations. Since I was drilling through the firewall, I measured and checked at least 5 times! Didn’t want an errant hole to plug up.. Drilling the 32mm hole for the bushings was made easy with a metric step drill bit I found on Amazon. Once done I just pulled the hoses through and secured the hose connector with some hose clamps. From there, I moved on to the front seat rails. Only a few components there, so I secured in place with clecos. I’ll be getting the missing rudder pedal bolts from Aircraft Spruce tomorrow, so I figure I cleco them in place. I’ll connect the pushrods and rudder cables as soon as the bolts arrive. The next stack of parts on the inventory shelf was the heater. This also has the newer style instructions, so it is relatively easy to follow.
After inventorying the parts and having enough to proceed, I went ahead and connected the brackets and hose to the heater. You have to cut the hose to fit in the valve, while trying to keep the hose ends parallel and the same length. The instructions call for creating some decent sized holes (32mm diameter for the hoses) in the firewall, have to get a metric step drill bit. Should come in shortly from Amazon. |
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