I made a lot of progress this evening on riveting the fuselage substructure together. The riveting starts with the rear seat brace area. Then along the longeron and baggage door stop. The mid fuselage longerons are then riveted to the… Read More »Fuselage Substructure Riveting
The forward fuselage section is finally complete! I ran into a snag with some holes in the firewall section (forward fuselage rib flanges) that hadn’t been dimpled (my mistake, but it also wasn’t mentioned in the plans and I wasn’t… Read More »Forward Fuselage Complete!
I broke my 3/32″ dimple die and I am still waiting for a replacement so I decided to get started on the upper forward fuselage section of the plans. I fabricated the forward angle and separated the instrument panel attach… Read More »Upper Forward Fuselage
The mid fuselage section has been in progress for a while and it is finally complete. One more section has been marked off the plans! I riveted the nutplates to the antenna doublers that I had made several months ago.… Read More »Mid Fuselage Complete!
We got started today on riveting the fuselage bottom skins. This was a two person job and Amber operated the rivet gun while I held the bucking bar. We started out slow and got into a routine fairly quickly. We… Read More »Mid Fuse Bottom Skin Riveting
I finished up a significant step today by getting the side skins, and related parts, ready to rivet. I also prepped the side vents so that I could prime everything together. I left the vinyl on the outside doors and… Read More »Fuselage Side Skins Primed
I proceeded with dimpling the fuselage side skins. I then cut out the baggage door opening and deburred the edges.
I’m adding return fuel lines for electronic ignition (SDS EFI) so I decided to drill the extra holes before deburring the side skins. I’m using hoses from Aircraft Speciality Flightlines. I purchased fuel fittings from TCW that make it easy… Read More »Return Fuel Line Holes and Fuselage Skin Deburring
I started dimpling the various parts that share holes with the fuselage skins this evening. Another set of parts ready for priming. Next up is deburring and dimpling the skins.
The firewall section is finally complete. I had five rivets left inside the firewall recess (to the rudder pedal brace) that required a swivel head rivet set. I had purchased the set a while back but never got around to… Read More »Firewall Section Complete
