SB 13-04-05 Completed

That was a quick job tonight. I came home from the paying job and started immediately on the SB to reinforce the oil canister bracket.
Removing the can came first.

I did not remove the battery and it turned out not to be necessary - if you have an angle drill that does not need the room the battery is occupying.

Next step was to mark the outboard holes and drill them.

The rib was marked and inserted and drilled through the holes in the bracket. Outboard side done.

On to the inboard side which has to get drilled from the inside of the cube if you do not want to remove the engine. The angle drill with the longer bit is good on the straight side while the shorter bit that is also visible in the photo is needed for the angled side to clear the battery.

Straight side was drilled and clecoed.

And so was the angled side.

Then the rib came out again, chips were removed and the rib and the holes deburred. Everything went back in and clecoed on and ready for riveting.

Riveting was a blast. I just took care to still have access in case I would want to drill out the rivets. The outboard side was all riveted from the outside, the inboard straight side from the inside and the inboard angled side from the outside again.

Finally, the oil canister went back into the bracket and got tightened.

1 hour and 15 minutes after I had started the SB was completed. Not too bad but I still hope I do not get many more of these interruptions on my way to completion. No, I will not ask the question, if I will ever get done with this project. As I know the answer to this and I do not feel strong enough to face it today.

Pitot Tube Dimpled

First a note on the latest Service Bulletin concerning the oil tank brace. The accessibility on the inboard side is a joke, as I had expected. The engine is in the way to even measure and mark the drill spots on the left facing side. I guess I will have to work this task from the inside of the cube with an angle drill and pre-drilled flanges.
Anyway, on to the good news. The red RTV had settled enough within 24 hours to remove the clamps and the results are looking good. I will inspect this closer tomorrow during day light.


Then I went on to drill the recess hole in the pitot tube to create the dimple on the inside. Very carefully, with the hand-drill and the freshly acquired #29 drill bit from Harbor Freight, I reamed more than I drilled, one shaving at a time until I could see something protruding into the tube and stopped.


Ready for the installation on the engine. It was dark by then, so this has to wait until tomorrow.

And yet another SB...

As I had just recently mentioned here, my build progress really feels like Van's keeps on issuing Service Bulletins whenever I made one or two steps ahead and pushes me back at least one step with this unplanned work creeping into my schedule.
And to prove my point, they issued another SB this morning which will afefct what I am working on right now (Section 49, Cooling System). Apparently they found cracks in the base of the structure that holds the battery and the oil reservoir to the firewall. The weight of the filled oil tank and the vibration from the engine are obviously too much for this lightweight cube to take. I will have to install a reinforcement to the base but the lack of accessibility to do the measuring and the match-drilling will make this a very, VERY awkward task to perform.
I am glad that I did not install the oil hoses to the reservoir yet as this would have made the removal of the oil tank much harder.
Tonight I will take a closer look at that inboard part of the battery box and see if and how I could get a drill bit in that area.
Will this ever stop? I guess I have to look at the bright side and appreciate that I get to do this before it is actually flying and creating all the problems and damages to the structure but it seems hard to blind out the severe slipping of my build schedule.