Zodie

Pulled the center console out to work on it. This made things much more convenient

I got a set of 4 point seat belts that are a little more substantial than those that came with the kit. I wasn't real happy with the attach plate. It was originally .040 I beefed it up to .125.

The fastener is a little beefier.

Seat pan went in easy. I pulled out the forward part of the seat and drilled it and then reassembled and drilled the rear

I ended up drilling from underneath with the tight fit drill to locate the two holes

Don't forget to locate where the canopy striker goes.

I spent a lot of time looking at how to hook up the torque tube for the flap dive. I ended up temporary wiring the drive unit to run the travel. I used an old 14 volt battery from a drill to run it. I want to make sure that I would have full up travel. Bill Sewell had a good discussion on this on his web site.

It took quite a bit of clecoing and un clecoing to locate the torque tube bearing. I ended up first locating the holes in on the outside of the fuse with a hinge like it says in the photo assy guide. Then used double stick tape to temporary locate the bearings. Once I had them in the correct location I drilled them. I ran the torque tube a couple of times to make sure it all worked. Then I took it apart and drilled the #10 holes. I reassembled it again and made sure it still worked.

I took my flaps and made a temporary flap. Notice the slot. This is new with the rev of the drawings. I hooked up the hinge and dry fit the assy. I then ran it up and down to check the travel.

I then carefully located where the tubes fit together and cut the holes for the #10 bolts. I also made sure that both are lined up so the flaps will be symmetric. This was a complicated build. I spent a lot of time studying the plans and other folks web sites. It actually turned out fine.

Just a couple of clean up items to go back and finish. I finished up the nose gear assy. I found that one of the aircraft I had flown had a very stiff nose gear and rudder. I cleaned up the nose gear pipe to make is smooth and made sure that the lower fitting is correct. Here I tapped the nylon to accept the bolts.

I found that the nose gear fitting was not quite working like I wanted. It needed to be bent about another degree and the hole pattern on the plans ended up too tight to the fire wall. I wend down to The Yard store and picked up some plate Al. I put it in the vice and clamped it to a 2x4 for some leverage and bent it. Worked great.

Here is a look at the new fitting. Installed. Works better. You can see where I cleaned the tube to cut down the friction.

Installed the Gasolator

Ok time to pull it all apart. and I mean lots of parts. Took quite a while to debur, and clean.

Primed most everything with variprime. I am going to paint the final coat on the interior parts. So I needed to identify these parts. I am using a water based primer and top coat. I want to use this for the final exterior so I decided to try it on the interior to get a little experinece.

I etched the skins and bottom and most of the large surface parts. The water based primer is supposed to go on the bare AL. I talked to the folks at Stewart Systems and they said it should go on fine over the Variprime. So for those small parts, angles and such I Just primed with the Variprime. Here I used the water based primer. This was not as easy to apply as the Variprime. You thin the primer with Distilled water. The viscosity is very tricky. it says to use no less than 16 seconds on their cup. I started with this and had not stirred all the solids correctly and ended up with a mess. Had runs everywhere. I ended up remixing and increasing the viscosity to 20 seconds, decreasing the amount of paint in the spray, set the pressure to 20 psi and had much better results. I wish I had done some more test spraying first. But good experience. I was almost ready to strip it all off and go with some other type of paint. But it is working fine now.

Here is the paint. http://www.aircraftfinishing.com/ On the right is the primer (white), and the left is the 2 part color (grey). It is kind of tricky but I got the hang of it. I am not a painter. So most of this is a new skill. The results turned out fine. Got a couple of runs. But it looks fine. The trick is get your gun set up right and very light coats. Took 4 coats of primer and 5 of the final. But only used 2/3 of the quart. So it is on there pretty thin. I think I will stay with it for the exterior. But still not sure.

Assembled and riveted the Firewall. You can see the seals for the nose wheel push rods

A close up of the seals. These were made from fiberglass and high Temp RTV

Starting to lay out the forward floor

While I have access I installed and riveted the aft a bulkhead and the flap assy.

Located the ELT behind the Copilot seat. Should have easy access by lifting

up the seat.

I polished the areas that move in the bearing and coated with a 2 part ceramic coating from AFT. The hope is that the friction will be reduced and the rudder will be less stiff. When I dry fit it it seemed to work well.

Here you can see the fire seals in action.