Fuel lines, misc, started roll bar.
I bolted on the right side gear weldment and then drilled the holes for the forward running arm of it. You can back drill one of the holes from inside the fuse out. The second hold is tucked behind vertical bulkhead, preventing access to drill. The holes are exactly 1" apart, so after drilling the first hole, on the outside, I measured a level line over exactly 1" and drilled. I managed to hit the hole on both sides. TIP: Drill to #30 first, countersink, then enlarge to 3/16". I forgot to do this on the pilot side and did a poor job of countersinking a 3/16" hole.

Holes drlled, one CS'd.

Next I moved on to flaring the tubing ends inside. There isn't a lot of room but I left a little extra.

Flaring tool

Ends flared.. but...

What is missing?

After fixing what was missing above, I bent the ends up to attach to the fuel selector. I didn't have ANY extra length to play with since I had to cut of the flares to install the fittings. I think I have it bent well enough to work. One tube just start collapsing.

Fuel lines in place.

While I was moving things around, I remembered I need to install a nutplate on the seat pan for the tunnel cover to attach to.

Nutplate on seat pan

Next stop... I initially waited to install the cross piece on the 705 bulkhead because Paul ran into an issue with the 705G angles interfering with the side skin rivets. Unfortunatly, there ain't a whole lot you can do about it. So I went ahead and riveted it on. TIP: Don't wait to do this. Since the canopy bulkhead (armrest) is already in place, it was a pain to drive the rivets.

705 cross member in place.

Time to start on the roll bar. (Sandi wants to call it the canopy support brace... doesn't want to entertain the idea of actually NEEDING a roll bar!) So I started making all of the little angle pieces.

732C's
732E's
631E plates
631D angles

I enlarged the holes in the end of the 631 pieces.

1.5" holes in 631.

Time to start assembling things. In order to create a flat, unwarped roll bar, you need to get it clamped to a flat surface. So I made up a little table out of 3/4" plywood and cut out some holes for clamps.

Wide shot
Close up

The other thing you need to do is get the correct width and height, cross-checking with the fuselage width. I drew a line on the plywood for the correct height and aligned the bottom ends of the 631 channels with this line. Then I trimmed the upper ends of the channels until I had the correct width. (Trimed about 3/16" total)

I drilled the 631E plates to the channels. TIP: Position the plate lower in the channel. Of course, I always read about things AFTER I do them. Look at Section A-A on DWG 39. The plate needs to sit lower in the channel so when the 732D angle gets riveted on the rivets to fall so close to the vertex of the angle. I just centered the plate horizontally and vertically.

P9050043.jpg


(Time: 7 hrs)
- posted by Matthew @ 10:02 AM