Cable conduit runs

A lot of people use the blue 1" cable conduit from HomeDepot, and for some reason, every home depot in my area is showing a stock of 4 or 5 rolls and not a single home depot could actually locate the items. I finally found some 1" black lightweight conduit on amazon.

I ended up punching some 1.5 inch holes in my ribs to accept some locking grommets that I ordered off of McMaster (5269T62). On top of that, I had ordered some nylon 1" cable clamps from SteinAir to lock all of the conduit along the ribs.

Sorry for all of the fiberglass dust. You can imagine the other section that I am currently working on.

Beringer Wheels

If you drill back a couple of months in the blogs you will see that I picked up a full Beringer set of wheels and brakes. I finally got around to getting my nose wheel duracoated (yeah, I still have a bunch of duracoat left over so I am using it in any location that is going to get really dirty).

SB08-6-1 (Part 2)

A couple of weekends ago I realized that I had fallen into the trap where I have too many active 50% complete sections going on. One of the first ones that I had been putting off was the Service Bulletin 08-6-1. A couple of months ago, I drilled out all of the deck rivets and got access to start drilling out the doublers. Everything was at the point where I could finish up the drilling, deburring, priming, and riveting.

Match drilling the doublers.



Starting to rivet the doublers in place.


A couple of months ago I picked up a CP alligator rivet squeezer. I really had no use for it, at the time, but I ended up winning it for $45. While the rest of my air tools are Sioux, I guess I can live with some older solid CP tools in the box.

Anyways, the top row of rivets could not be squeezed with any of the yolks I had. The angles were just not right. I was going to hit these with the gun, but I was able to squeeze all the rivets with the alligator squeezer.



A couple more rivets and the deck can go on!

Initial Cabin Top Fitting

My father was around for fathers day and I had the day off. What better way to spend it than taking the cabin top down from the ceiling and getting its initial fitup done! I am happy to say that with a fair bit of sanding and cutting everything fits perfectly. I know everyone has horror stories of dealing with fiberglass, but I found it to cut like butter with the right tools (25K 3M cutoff disks) and a dust mask.

Controls

I need to actually do the write up here, but I was finally able to do the final assembly on the rudder pedals / brakes!  Attached are some images of the progress.

Rod end bushings:

Drilling the bearing blocks

Drilling the center bearing block

Cutting the center bearing block

Step clean-up and paint

The steps are pretty straight forward. Most people tend to recommend step bushings, others hate them and tell you there is no need. I began by cleaning up the welds on the steps. A lot of the Vans welded pieces look really great, my steps look like a 9th grade welding research project. I ground down a bunch of the excess metal and TIG welded a couple of areas that I was not happy with. From there I hit the steps with red scotchbrite on my 3 inch 90 degree grinder.

I took the primer that was on the steps down to give my paint/primer a little tooth.

I was wondering what to do in terms of paint, but then in my gun room found an extra can of duracoat paint/hardener. I have been pretty dang happy with duracoat on guns, so why not paint my steps in them. This is probably way overkill, but it is a really good coating that should stick up to the abuse that they are going to take. On top of it, Tactical Extreme Grey is going to match my paint scheme well!

Finished step.

Inserting the TCW step bushing (yes, I did put a loop of 550 cord around this before tapping them down the tube. To my surprise both of the bushings lined up perfectly with the hole and neither needed any clocking post install [I am not sure how that happened]).

Tunnel

 I intend to install the Aerosport center console and Andair fuel valve so one of the obvious "upgrades" is providing side access to the tunnel near the fuel boost pump so that I don't have to dissassemble half of the plane to inspect or change the fuel filter. At this stage, this is a pretty easy task and I am glad I did it now rather than at my first annual. I feel pretty bad about the fact that I purchased this access plate cover. This is the access plate from airward. I thought it was a great idea because everything was set and ready to go, no measuring (in theory). I say in theory, but I ended up with one of the plates where the rivet holes do not match the rivet holes in the floor pan. So I ended up offsetting the backing plate and match drilling new holes. Given that, I would not recommend the cost of purchasing a plate from airward. Sorry airward.

Finding the location / offset

Marking and cutting

I drilled the corner holes with a step drill and then used my Sioux mini reciprocating saw to cut the straight lines. From there a little touchup with a disc sander and everything was ready to be riveted.

Installed and ready to go! Too easy.