Working the list
Hours: 10.4 | Posted in Canopy & Frame, Cowling & Baffles, Wing & Tail JoinsFinally, a work session with something more than sanding. Worked a bunch of list items over a full day in the shop:
Brushed epoxy on the front of the top rudder tip, filling the pinholes in the micro which was sanded yesterday. Added a blob of micro to the trailing edge, where the glass tip ended short of the metal portion. I’ll refit this to the rudder tomorrow and sand the tip TE to match the rudder.
Set up a plastic-sheet spray booth, cleaned the HVLP gun, and sprayed PPG DPLF epoxy primer on the canopy fairing, HS and VS tips, elevator tips, rudder bottom, and empennage fairing. After that, it was time to air out the shop and bring it up to temperature again, as the epoxy primer and subsequent gun cleaning step kick off a lot of fumes. I found only two pinholes in the canopy fairing, both over screw heads. The emp fairing has a goodly number still (as I expected), and the tips have a few. I’ll let the primer cure overnight, then fill the holes and sand level before laying down the K36 which is the next step in finishing. That puts the second coat on schedule for Monday or Tuesday, though it looks like I may have to work on Tue night. The recoat window is one week.
On to the cowling, I cleaned up the cut line on the rear of the inlet duct, then fabricated a piece of airseal and a metal backing strip, fitting them around the bottom of the duct. This will mate up with the top piece, which is installed on the airbox, to seal the gap between duct and airbox. A test fit, after tweaking the alignment of the airbox, showed it worked well.
Next, I countersunk all the rivet holes for the cowling hinges, and drilled some “ooze holes” in the hinge to give epoxy something extra to bond to. Sanded the cowling and the hinges with a rough grit, and laid a bead of epoxy/flox along the hinge lines. Clecoed the hinges on, then riveted them down, and cleaned up the flox that squeezed out all around. Ran hinge pins through the hinges to make sure none of the eyes were epoxied shut. Also floxed/riveted the oil door hinge to the cowl and door.
Put rivets in the remaining 5 holes under the left side canopy deck, originally left open to attach clips to hold the static line. One hole was behind the center section cover, and inaccessible for bucking, so I used a Cherry rivet instead.
Torqued the nuts on the control cables at the quadrant, and the stopnuts on the control horns attaching the cables to the quadrant levers. Verified that cotter pins were installed on the horns (they were).
