Nose Wheel Fairing Completed

First I removed the masking tape from the electrical connector closeouts.

Then they went onto the fuselage.

Then I worked on incorporating the SB 12-08-09 (a reinforcement to the nose wheel fairing brackets) into the nose wheel brackets.

Then the front fairing was ready to get mounted onto the nose wheel.

The fit was good but the clearance to the tire was too small. With a minimum of 0.5" all around, I should be able to get my index finger in between and should have been able to get around without getting pinched. That was not the case, so I mounted the aft part as well to see if both parts needed further trimming (and for the looks).

It almost makes that nose leg looks tiny and thin, doesn't it?

All went off again, so I could give the tire enough clearance.

I now went to trim back to the second scribe line as you can see in the picture. That was not really enough either. I ended up widening the opening almost to the end of the splice strip before I was satisfied.

I also trimmed the openings for the tow bar. They needed quite some elongation on the aft side before there would not be any interference with the fairing while pushing or pulling on the tow bar.

That completed the work on the actual fairing. Next was the nose leg fairing which fit pretty well right away. It needed a bit of shortening on the top but nothing else. The way Van's wants me to connect it to the leg though I do not approve of. I will not be drilling into the nose leg just to attach the fairing.
For now I will restrict myself to trimming it to allow for enough clearance to the aft wheel fairing and then think about a good way of holding the leg fairing in place that does not involve drilling into the leg.

So I moved on to installing the POH tray under the instrument panel on the passenger side, a subset of section 43.

I was a bit tough to get at at this time and I should have definitely installed this before even riveting the instrument board in.

The tray allows the POH to stay secured yet making it easily accessible at any time. Van's really designed this very well.

Tomorrow, I hope to finish the trimming work on the nose leg fairing and after smoothening the skirt on the canopy, I consider the project completed - pending rigging work at the airport. Hopefully I can move the plane out to a hangar next weekend.

Nose Wheel Fairing Trimmed

After checking the successful installation of the fuel gauge, I went on to prep the bracket that will hold the Operating Manual under the shelf on the passenger side. I wanted to prime the flanges before riveting them into place.

Then I completed the SB 13-08-08 by installing the AN3 lock nuts and replacing the broken VA-219 bolt that I had received from Van's in the mail yesterday.

And when I could not find anything else to do to avoid getting back to fiberglass trimming, I finally went back to the nose wheel fairing.
I was not as bad as I remembered it and I was closer to finishing the trimming part than I had thought, so I was way less painful than anticipated.

There was just one small area where I had over-trimmed it and needed some filling (and some fine trimming after curing).

While this was sitting, I started working on the nose leg fairing and removing some areas beyond scribe lines.

In the meanwhile the epoxy of the filler had already cured enough to handle the part and I removed the fairing half as well as the backing plate for the upcoming trimming.

It seem to have bonded nicely, so this should be easy to trim to line.
The last step of today's work was to apply some lightweight epoxy filler on the top of the aft half of the fairing. The join was not done nicely and one half of the fairing part was a bit higher than the other. I sanded it down a bit but need some filler on the lower side to build it up slightly. So there is more sanding in my near future.

This should all be cured enough to get it done tomorrow.