Section 23 Completed

Finally, after almost 70 hours of work, the exhausting section 23 has been completed today!
It started with the installation of the air sickness detectors or air vents as they are usually called. Check Dave's blog if you don't understand why they are also called air sickness detectors. I found that a much more precise term than air vents.


This required some match-drilling. Right side clecoed and ready for the drill bit.
Nothing really fancy about this step only that I had some trouble with the final installation of the vent doors because I didn't precisely remove the material Van's had asked for and so the doors wouldn't fully close due to some interference. It was much more time consuming to remove the material now that the door had been riveted together from its various parts but I managed and so eventually the vent doors were installed.


Then the last step was at hand, installing the piano hinges that will eventually hold the lower cowling to the fuselage. This again required some mach drilling and also some priming of a spacer that sits under the hinge.
This was all quickly thrown together and riveted on, so all you get is the photo when it was completed.


And this completed section 23. Horray!

It was around noon and getting real hot (95F today) but it was too early to call it a day, so I went inside the shop, turned that great A/C on and closed the door.
I wanted to continue on section 24, which is the rollbar installation. The parts were already primed on the inside but I hadn't riveted them together yet because I read in other blogs and in the forum that people had issues following the plans order. It seems that the fit of the rollbar is pretty tight and it is very hard to slide the completed rollbar onto the base pieces on the fuselage. My plan was to complete part of the riveting off the fuselage but leave the two halves separated for now. Try a test fit on the bases and then rivet the parts together while they are already clecoed to the bases. My hope is that by doing that I won't have an issue trying to slide it over the bases afterwards.

So, I started by riveting together the two sides of each half.


And then added the inner strips to the aft half.


That was quickly riveted.


While at it I also added the modifications for the little "reading" light that will get attached to the front rollbar. I also drilled the holes for the wire into the flange of the aft rollbar and put the snap bushing in. I didn't feel like trimming the flange (and ruin the looks) and so I ended up using clear silicone RTV on the inside of the flange to glue the snap bushing in. The side of the hole is so deep that the snap bushing wouldn't snap in without being recessed - or glued in)



The final step was then to open up a pilot hole to 3/8" in the right rollbar attach plate on the fuselage to accept another snap bushing for the wiring. This one can get drilled wider from below and allo wthe snap bushing to get properly seated.


And that concluded another busy weekend.