Rear Floor Prep

I’m going to rivet the rear floors into place prior to riveting the rear seat bases and baggage compartment floors. The plans have you rivet the aft part of the rear seat bases while working through the baggage area section, then lift up the forward part to rivet the floors into place.

It seems like they use this order to keep the floors and cover panels together in the same section of the plans but I don’t see any reason why the floors can’t go in first.

I ran this by Van’s while asking another question and they also didn’t see any problem with doing it in this order.

My fuselage kit has final size holes so I thankfully don’t need to match drill these. I’m choosing to put these in once (I have seen many reports of damage done in getting these out). I will match-drill the holes to the forward bulkhead in place carefully so I can minimize burrs (1/8 drill then ream to final). I’ll also be able to get a bit of sandpaper in there to knock off any small burrs.

In comparing the cutouts with the braces that hold the forward seat rails, I noticed that the cutouts were slightly too narrow. I removed a little over 1/32nd on each side of each cutout.

I then deburred the floors and dimpled the holes.

I then etched and primed the floors.

The nutplates were then dimpled and riveted into place.

These are now ready to install.