ForwardFuselage

Tonight was a big night, because my local EAA Tech Counselor, Roger Robinson, came by to check out my project. To make a long story short he wrote down on the visit report that my workmanship is very good and that I should continue with this work quality. I was happy to hear that :-) I also clamped the rudder pedal construction in the fuse and used a sharpie to mark the positions of the side blocks. When the skin comes off in the next days, I will drill them to the longerons.

Note why didn't I make any pictures of Roger's visit? Because I completely forgot!

Riveted the pedals together today. I did have to redo one as I noticed (when it was all done) that I riveted the sides the wrong way around! After drilling out rivets I redid it the right way this time. After that I temporarily mounted them in the frame and centered it with some scratch angle. I centered the pedals themselves with a piece of scrap aluminum. Also temporarily bolted on the top of the brake cylinders.

Next was marking the spot where the bottom of the brake cylinder would be mounted to the pedals. I did this with a short #12 drillbit.

Our leo Argo was lying around and although I think he was interested in the drilling process he didn't show it ;-)

After drilling and reaming the 3/16 inch hole, I temporarily mounted the brake cylinders to the pedals and tested them out. They work fine! Oh, I needed about 4 washers to make the cylinders line up with the side of the frame.

By the way, I haven't shortened the pedal frame yet as indicated on the drawing, as it turns out it fits nicely as is.

Deburred, primed and reclecod the rudder pedals again. After talking to Mike, I decided not to powdercoat the pedals: it's fairly expensive and hard to repair if it ever wears down later.

Worked on the rudder pedals today. Did all the drilling and countersunk the brake connection brackets for AN426 rivets. Drilled out the bolt holes to 3/16 inch. I also hung up the pedal structure on some blocks mounted to my workbench. One piece slipped in the side brackets without any problems, while with the other piece I had some problems getting it to go nicely into the side brackets. After a little light sanding I got it to fit.

Good day in the shop today. I drilled both fuse tank attach brackets to the skin and reinforcement brackets. The left side I drilled wrong 3 days ago was challenging but clamping it tight to the skin this time made it doable.

After that I put the front bottom skin on again and drilled it to the side skins, longerons and firewall brackets. To do this I drilled 4 rivet holes so that I could keep the longerons in the right place when the skin would go over them.

Next were the floor stiffeners. The two center ones were easy to do alone as they could be clamped to the firewall and bulkhead brackets. Using a centerline on the back of the stiffeners I centered them and drilled them from the top cleco'ing on the way. I cut a little material from the corner of both stiffeners to make the fit a bit better on the firewall side.

I drilled both center stiffeners to the firewall brackets using my angle drill.

And to the bulkhead brackets on the other side. Oh, these should be match-drilled. I almost made the mistake to start drilling from the other side.

The other two floor stiffeners were more of a challenge to do alone. In the end I drilled a first hole on the bulkhead side and cleco'd the stiffener in place, followed by sticking my arm through the recess to keep the other side of the stiffener in place and match drill it using the skin as a guide.

Last but not least I deburred all the rudder pedal parts on the scotchbrite wheels and laid them out on the bench. I'd like to powdercoat the rudder pedals themselves, but will have to find a place around here that does this.

After a call with Vans today, I refabricated the reinforcement brackets and redrilled it to the longerons and skin. I did this for the right bracket as well. Next is finding a way to keep the fuel tank attach bracket really stable against the skin and redrill the bolt hole.

Reached 600 hours with an OUCH tonight. When drilling the bracket that will bolt to the left tank attach bracket I made a mistake and it moved when I was drilling :-( Unfortunately I didn't notice the move (must have been sleeping!) and I kept on drilling until it looked like:

Now this is no big deal for the bracket as I can just make a new one, but the skin will have a hole in the wrong location. I will have to call Vans tomorrow to ask what I can do about this. I suspect that it is no big deal because the load will be on the bracket and not on the skin and the extra hole will be under the wing fairing. But still...

Note: Ken at Vans told me that this won't be a problem as the skin is not part of the structural construction. As long as the longerons and reinforcement brackets are fine, I should be good to go!

I drilled the top and bottom of the two 902 bulkheads to the longerons.

Fabricated the spacers and shims that will hold the fuselage-side tank brackets and drilled the spacers to the skin.

More work on the forward fuse today. I finished making and bending the gussets and clamped them in the right positions.

I then used my angle drill to first drill and cleco the gussets to the firewall side angles. To do that I peeled back the skin enough to get my drill in that space.

Since the skin was peeled back, I also drilled the skin stiffener bracket to the firewall angle.

Next I fluted the 902 bulkheads a little and clecod them to the side skin. Both sides fit perfectly. The 7117 gear webs where then clecod into the space between the 704 bulkhead and the 902 bulkheads. Some people had to use shims here to make a nice fit between the gear web flange and 902 bulkhead, but mine seemed to fit nicely without that. I drilled the bulkheads to the skin, the gear web flanges to the bulkhead and the gear web to the skins. The following pics show how it all came out.

I cut the 717 lower longerons to size today and trimmed the 4 and 1/8 inches off the 704 bulkhead side. This will be to clear the landing gear web later on. Put the twist in both longerons as the manual said and clamped them to the firewall bracket in preparation for drilling. I started the 4 bolt holes using a #30 drill, followed by a #19 and last but not least reamed those holes out to #12. AN3 bolts fit perfectly in these holes! I started fabricating the gussets as well, but need to finish that tomorrow.

Completely drilled the 713 aux longerons today incl. the firewall bracket.

I also fabricated the brackets that hold the 719 longerons in place on the firewall and match-drilled a couple of holes through the side skin using a centerline on the longeron.

I drilled the bottom of the firewall to the 772 skin tonight. Used lots of boelube on the steel!

Next task was cutting out the holes for the landing gear legs from the 772 skin. Contrary to what the plans say I left the skin clecod on and cut the flanges of the 704 at the same time. Started with a unibit to take some of the material away, then used a snip to cut the center out followed by a cutting wheel on the Dremel (love that tool!). Last but not least I used a sanding drum on the Dremel and some sandpaper to smooth out the edges. This probably needs some more work later when the gear legs are mounted.

Last thing of the night was cutting the aux longerons to length to make them sit flush with the edge of the 704 flange and twist them a bit so they fit nicely with the firewall brackets. To make things easier I took the 772 bottom skin off and clamped the longerons to the skin, making sure the center line drawn on the flange is visible. I drilled one hole on the 704 side to make sure it would all stay on until tomorrow when I drill the rest.

Drilled the sides of the firewall to the side skins today.

Also drilled the 7 holes on both sides to the firewall brackets.

Last but not least I drilled the 704L pieces to the longerons and 704 bulkhead sides. And guess what, I'm running out of cleco's!

I finished drilling the longerons to the 770 side skins today.

Also drilled the side skin to the outer seat ribs.

Cut about 3/16 inch of the front of both longerons to get the clearance needed.

This was followed by drilling the longerons all the way to the front of the skin edge.

And then finally the firewall was hung for the first time. I did had to take it off and twist the longerons a bit more to make it all fit. I then clamped the longerons to the firewall brackets and the bottom skin to the bottom of the firewall, making sure I got 5/8 inch distance from the firewall to the edge of the front bottom skin.

For sure my compressor got a good workout today with all the heavy drilling!