Forward Fuselage Assembly

I finally get to start doing some riveting again!  There are a few items that pay to rivet together first before putting the skins on. I put the nutplates on the 684 gussets and then riveted the gussets to the vertical firewall angles.

Next up were the gear attach webs and the 902 bulkheads.  The bulkheads also have a couple of nutplates that will be used for attaching clamps for the fuel vent lines.

The right and left stiffeners were riveted to the angle clip and then riveted to the firewall angles.

Space is getting tough to come by with parts all over the place and the firewall, center section, side skins, tailcone, etc. all spread out.  I started deburring holes in the tailcone (where it attaches to the center section) and then got the left side skin holes deburred.  It's now ready for dimpling.

Fuselage Priming

I finished pulling the fuselage apart and rolled the tailcone over to pull the longerons out.  I can't say that I have been relishing what comes next - prepping everything for primer.  Today's temperature was forecasted to be in the 70's and sunny, followed by rain this week, so my plan was to buckle down and get everything primed while I had good weather.

As much of a pain as it is to prime so many parts with awkward bends, the temperature sure made a difference.  I'd forgotten how nice it is to prime at 75 degrees vs 35.

After I got the pile of parts done, I was feeling pretty good, until I realized I still had to do the longerons!  There have to be 200+ holes in each longeron, and virtually all of them have to be countersunk.  Needless to say, it took a while!  I powered through and got both longerons countersunk and primed, so now I'm in a pretty good place to move on with assembly.

Forward Fuselage Deconstruction

I pulled apart most of the forward fuselage today.  I was able to deburr and countersink most of the parts, but still have all of the deburring and dimpling of the skins to do.  Next I'll be removing the parts from the baggage area, then at that point I'll be able to pull the side skins off and disconnect the center section from the tailcone.  Lastly, I'll have to pull the main longerons out so I can countersink the 4 million holes in them.  Hopefully I can get everything ready for a priming session this coming weekend.  It's supposed to be sunny and warm, so perfect for priming.

It's strange to have space to actually be able to walk around again.  That won't last long though.

I received a few upholstery color samples from Classic Aero.  I'm pretty sure I want to go with gray tones, so that's all I had them send.  They sent both leather and ultraleather samples, as well as carpet.

Gear Weldments

After all of that work putting the fuselage together, it's finally time to take it apart again. I pulled the floor stiffeners and bottom skin off, but decided to test fit the gear leg attachments before I took everything else apart.  The gear weldments fit against the wing spar bulkhead and stick through the bottom skin.  The flange of the bulkhead has to be ground away to allow the tube to fit.  It's a little nerve wracking cutting out a huge chunk of the flange, but apparently that's what you do!  When I had the flange ground down enough, I took the gear weldments off and started dismantling the fuselage.  For the foreseeable future I'll be deburring, countersinking, priming, and dimpling piles of parts to get ready to put it all together again.

Floor Stiffeners & Baggage Walls

I'm sneaking up on the last few items to do before the entire fuselage gets pulled apart for deburring, dimpling, priming, etc.  That's exciting, but also exhausting to think about - that's a lot of dimpling, countersinking and riveting to do!

The floor stiffeners are the last pieces left to do in the forward fuselage.  There are four of them - long pieces of angle that have a jog at each end so that they can lay flat to the skin and then go up and over the firewall aluminum angle and spar bulkhead flange.  The two center stiffeners attach to the big F-601J angles at the firewall and also attach to the cover support ribs on the front side of the forward section bulkhead.

Laying out the holes on the firewall angle is pretty much impossible at this stage (no idea why they tell you to wait - it would have been far easier to do when fabricating the piece before it was riveted to the firewall).  I laid the holes out on a thick piece of scrap instead, then clamped that to everything to use as a template.

It took a while to get the measurements correct, but the template ended up making drilling the three holes through the thick firewall angle and into the floor stiffener a non-event.  I don't use my pneumatic right angle drill often, but when I need it, I need it!  I used it quite a bit today.  There's no way I could have done a quality job without it.

The aft portion of the center stiffeners also get riveted to the cover support ribs on the bulkhead.  The ribs already have the holes in them though, so for this end it was a quick job to just match drill through to the stiffeners.  The two outside floor stiffeners were a bit tougher to deal with initially, just because there is nothing to clamp them to for lining them up.  I had to crawl under the fuselage about 100 times to tape them in position, then check the location, crawl back under to move them a little, check, crawl, check, crawl, over and over until I had them lined up and the first holes drilled for clecos.

Next up were the walls of the baggage area.  There are vertical and horizontal ribs on each side, and ultimately the bottom portion gets covered up by a few pieces of sheet aluminum to make an inside wall.  I drilled a few larger holes in the vertical ribs to make a place to run rudder cables and static tubing (or wiring - depends on how I end up routing the Dynon static/pitot lines).

It's still a bit confusing since the fuselage is still upside down.  The blue sheet in the pic below is the inside wall of the baggage compartment.  This portion of the wall will be permanently attached, but the forward wall that goes in front of this one will be put on with nutplates.  It needs to be removable since it covers up some of the flap control mechanism.  I final sized all of the holes for the ribs, skins, walls, etc.  The very last thing I have to do before I rip everything apart is drill holes through the end flanges of the vertical ribs into the main fuselage longeron and the bottom skin.  I'll tackle that another day.

Pedal Support & Floor Stiffeners

Half of today was spent simply finding places to store all of the finish kit stuff.  My office looks more like a warehouse at this point.  Once that was out of the way though, I got back to working on the rudder pedal assembly.  The middle section of the pedals gets a support brace that is mounted to the firewall.  I cut a notch in the bottom of it to clear the protruding piece that makes up the firewall recess.  The bracket gets riveted to one of the pieces of angle on the firewall, so I laid out some holes that I can match drill into the angle.

There is a plastic block that sandwiches the pedal tubes and bolts to the bracket.  I drilled the bolt holes in it, then cut it in half.  I attached the bracket on the inside of the firewall angle just to make it easier to drill the angle (picture is before I drilled the holes in the bracket), but it will ultimately be attached on the outside side of the angle.

I drilled the bracket to match the holes in the plastic block.  Van's really didn't think this part through though.  The bolt hole layout that they call out for this block is different than the holes in the blocks that support the pedal assembly at the ends (they could have been the same had they just made the block a hair longer).  For the other blocks, they say to drill extra holes to make it easier to adjust the pedal distance if needed.  In order for that to work, you have to allow the center block to move as well of course.  I was able to drill one additional set of holes in the bracket, but couldn't get a third.  There is room on the bracket for a third location, but because the holes of the different blocks aren't equal, a third location in the center bracket would make one hole so close to an existing one that it would essentially be a figure 8.  So for now, I have only two options for pedal distance.  I'll just have to see how that works out.

That's all for the pedals right now.  I will put the brake pedals and brake cylinders on later.  I pulled the pedal assembly out so I'd have more room to finish up the rest of the fuselage.  Next up are the floor stiffeners.  I clecoed the bottom skin back on and drew center lines on the stiffeners.  I'm not quite sure how I'm going to line up the stiffeners for drilling - I suppose duct tape and a lot of crawling back and forth to wiggle them into place.

Finish Kit Inventory (2)

No fun pictures to show for it, but I finished the finish kit inventory.  There were a few things missing that I emailed Van's about.  Like with the fuselage kit, a number of things are on back order as well.  Given how much work I have left to do on the fuselage, I don't think that's going to be a problem though.  Now I just have to figure out where to store it all!  I think a lot of it will have to come inside for a while until I've made my way through the remaining fuselage parts.

I do still have to order the firewall forward kit at some point, but I think I can wait on that for at least a while.  Once all of these major assemblies are done, the head scratching will really ramp up.  While the plans have generic instructions regarding the engine, fuel, and electrical systems, there is so much variability in how people do it that they don't go into a lot of detail on how it should be done.  I've got a decent idea just from what I've learned over the years, but it's still going to be a big learning curve.

Finish Kit Inventory

I wasn't planning on it showing up until late summer, but the finish kit is already here!  There are plenty of items still back ordered, but I won't need it for a while, so there's no rush at this point.  I still have many, many months of work left on the fuselage, so the big question is where on earth am I going to store all of this until I need it?

The canopy and cowling don't seem big in pictures, but they are gigantic in person.  Granted, the canopy gets quite a bit cut off during the fitting, so it'll shrink in size by the time it's all over.  I can see what people mean when they say fiberglass isn't Van's forte.  The pieces are decent, but they're going to take a lot of work to get them to fit nicely and be smooth.

Aside from the monster pieces, most of the inventory fits on my workbench.  Once the fuselage is finished, there just aren't that many big pieces left!  Inventory started out quickly with the big items.  The little box in the foreground will take hours and hours though.  That's all of the bags of hardware (all mixed up as is Van's custom).  I started on the hardware tonight and spent a few hours on it.  It doesn't look like I even made a dent.  I'll continue that another day.  Most hardware is common to stuff I already have, so I'm just counting to ensure I have everything I need and then combining it all together with hardware from previous kits.  There's enough new stuff that I'm starting to run out of places to put it all though.  Once I'm done I'll have to take a step back and figure out where to hide it until I'm done with the fuselage.

So far, the one glaring mistake is that Van's sent me full size drawings for an RV8, not the RV9.

F-996C & Pedal Assembly

I'm itching to be done with the fiddly spacers and random pieces that take forever to fit but are tough to see progress in.  I finished up the fuel tank attach point reinforcement pieces for both sides and riveted the assemblies together.  You can see the spacer on the left that goes in between the side skin and the gear attach web, then the reinforcement angle.  The spacer is countersunk for two rivets that hold everything together.

The gear attach web then went back into the fuselage.  I also drilled the holes in the web and side skins for the fuel line and vent lines.  I used hole saws for these holes, but I'm not thrilled with the quality of the cut.  They ended up pretty uneven and rough.  I think probably just because the teeth on the hole saws are pretty aggressive.  I can smooth the holes out, but it will enlarge them a bit.  I took a look at the rubber grommets that go in the holes, and they should fit fine even with less than perfect holes.

That all took about 100x longer than it should have, but it's finally done! I switched back over to the brake/rudder assembly.  I stacked the right and left rudder pedal assemblies together and trial fit the two plastic bearing blocks that go on each end.  The instructions are pretty much non-existent at this point.  They basically say to build the pedals and everything else, but that's about it.  At this stage of the build, they assume you can figure everything out by looking at the drawings.  That's not overly difficult anymore, but it assumes accurate drawings...I just have to hope most are more accurate than what I went through recently with the last few pieces.  I still need to rivet together the pedals themselves, but I think I'll wait and do that when I'm ready to prime a bunch of parts.  I did go ahead and countersink and deburr the pedals so they are ready to go though.

It's not called out anywhere, but based on the drawings it looks like the holes drilled in the bearing blocks are at a slight angle, meaning they are directional.  After some back and forth I got it figured out.  I made sure to label right and left, as well and front and top so I can be sure they go back in the same direction once I'm ready to assemble.

Each block has to be drilled to accept bolts that will attach the pedal assembly to a couple of the fuselage skin stiffeners.  My drill press vice is far from perfect, but I was able to get the block set up well enough to drill decent holes.  I started small and worked my way up to a #10.

The middle stiffener (with the cleco in it) is the part that the bearing blocks rest on.  Having the fuselage upside down always makes the mental gymnastics a little harder to do.  I can't wait until I can flip it all over so the picture in my head matches reality.

Putting the blocks in place and drilling the stiffeners while they are attached to the skin would be next to impossible, so after measuring where the blocks need to rest, I pulled the stiffeners out.  The blocks have a minimum distance they have to be away from the firewall (3").  I added 1/8" to that just to make sure I don't run into issues down the road.  I clamped each block to the stiffeners and used them as a guide to drill the holes.

The location of the blocks sets the distance to the pedals.  The plans mention that it's a good idea to drill extra holes so that adjusting leg room later on will be easier.  I probably drilled far more than necessary, but if I ever sell the plane to somebody with super short legs, they'll appreciate the flexibility.  The stiffeners then went back into the fuselage so I could do a trial fit of everything.

It's still all upside down, but pretty cool to see how it all goes together.  I didn't tighten up the bolts at all at this point.  They're just in enough to keep things from falling out while work on the next pieces (more plastic retainer blocks and a support brace for the middle of the assembly).

F-996C (2)

A few days ago I had asked Van's about the edge distance on the F-996C angle holes.  They responded and said even though that part is what the tank attach bracket connects to, there is actually very little stress on it.  The minimal edge distance is planned for and not a big deal since the part is really just to beef up the area so the tank bracket isn't only connected to the skin.  I'll get back to making the 996C angles, but figured I'd keep rolling on the brake pedals since I had started them the other day.

I made all of the angle pieces of the brake pedals, matched everything up and drilled all of the rivet and bolt holes.  I did goof up one of the premade pieces though - I wasn't thinking and upsized the wrong hole to 3/16".  I could just put a bolt through the hole instead of a rivet, but the part is only $5, so I ordered a new one from Van's.  I'm sure that little piece of metal would be $500 for a Cessna!

 

Back to the F-996C angles - I'm not really sure how to describe the process I went through to get these done!  Because the measurements on the plans are wrong, coupled with the fact it's a super awkward setup to match up, clamp, drill, etc, it took something like 5 hours to make one single piece for the left side.  I ended up having to make templates to transfer holes between pieces, since one part that has to be match drilled is a spacer that goes on the back side of the gear web (so it's a blind part - nothing to easily line it up with like the plans say to since their reference hole location is completely off).  I'll have take some better pictures another time when I put it all together. It's hard to explain how it all fits.  I finally got the left side done after spending most of the day on it, but the right side only took a half hour or so since I knew how to tackle it.  The spacer and angle have to be riveted to the web, so I just sprayed some rattle can primer on the mating parts and will rivet tomorrow.  I'll prime the rest of it down the road when I prep everything for riveting.

F-996C & Brakes

Today I made scrap aluminum.  Lots of it!  The F-996C (Drawing 38) is a simple part to make.  It's just a piece of angle cut to length with various angles and holes.  I made a left and a right version based on the drawings, set them in place, and immediately saw that the holes were way off.  I checked and double checked.  I did everything correctly, but there was no way anything was going to match up with the pre-existing holes in the skins and longerons.  I had always heard people talk about the fact that they had to make these pieces multiple times, but I had never really grasped why.  Well, it turns out the dimensions shown on the plans are wrong, that's why!  It's a bit puzzling why Van's would rather answer questions over and over about these parts for the past 20 years instead of take the 10 minutes to update the dimensions.

With my first two attempts in the scrap bin, I started attempt three.  I just cut the angle to size and then decided to match drill the first hole with it clamped in place on the skin. While this went okay, the hole ended up very close to the end of the piece (the hole is drilled to #30 right now, but will be enlarged to 3/16" later,  making the edge distance even worse).  I was already three deep at this point, so figured why not try for number four!  I cut another angle (not taking the time to make the beveled sides yet) and was very slow about sneaking up on the length - I made it as long as it could possibly be and still slide in between the two longerons it perches on.  I drilled the pilot hole, and sure enough, the edge distance was still pretty bad.  I'm fairly certain there is no physical way to get the hole any further away from the edge since it is matching the holes already put in place on the longerons/skins.  After four attempts, I wasn't seeing straight, so I decided to just move on.  I emailed Van's to ask them what the story is.  Not only are the drawing dimensions wrong, but there are actually call-outs in the instructions that contradict some notes in the drawings.  We'll see what they have to say.  I've looked at a lot of pictures of other builds today, and as far as I can tell, that hole that is super close to the end of the piece is just the way it is.  Since this is a reinforcing piece for ultimately bolting on the front tank bracket from the wing, I figured pausing and checking with Van's is the way to go though.  The good news is, when I bought the used wing kit, he had apparently ordered two extra longerons (those super long ones that I bent for the fuselage).  Messing up a 20 foot longeron comes with super expensive shipping, so a lot of people order extras just in case.  Since I got my longerons right on the first try, I now have a whole lot of angle left over to play with.  Thankfully it's the same size as what is needed for this 996C piece.  So I can make this over and over until I'm happy with it.

I needed something a little more mindless to finish out the day, so I moved to the next step, which is starting on the rudder/brake pedals.  These are made from very thick aluminum, so most of my time was just spent sanding and smoothing the pieces and cutting out some angle supports.  I still haven't decided if I will prime and paint the pedals, but I doubt I will.  I think just about anything I put on the pedals will eventually wear through and look worse than just having bare aluminum.  I'll prime the mating pieces, but I think I'll just leave the pedals bare.