It took a couple of weeks, but I finally got my replacement canopy rail. After having one poorly manufactured rail that was replaced, only to destroy the replacement trying to get the curve right, I admittedly held my breath a little as I was checking the fit on this one! The curve is very close! I think I'll still probably need to make a fiberglass skirt that creates a small overlap from the canopy skin and fuselage skin to tidy up the fit, but who knows (in the standard approach, the canopy skin butts up even to the fuselage skin along the entire length of the canopy - a very hard trick to pull off with the variability in fit of these canopy parts!).
The aft portion of the rail didn't fit nearly as well as the side curve. It had an oddball angle to it that pulled the aft end in 1/4" from where it needed to be. The canopy wouldn't fit over the rollbar if left that way, so a good chunk of my afternoon was spent massaging that aft end. I was ultimately able to get it to set fairly flush with the outside edge of the rollbar. The price I paid was that it caused the big aluminum end piece to set at a slight angle to the rollbar. This happened on the last rail I had too, so I think there's either a slight angle to how my rollbar sets, or the jig Van's uses is different from right to left (the right side fit great). I finally got the angle to set flush on the outer edge and only have a 1/8" gap on the inside edge. I pulled everything apart and slathered a bunch of JB Weld onto the angle to fill the gap (I put packing tape on the rollbar so the JB Weld wouldn't glue the two pieces together). These parts get riveted and bolted together, so the gap just needs to be filled with something solid to act as a shim. Once the JB Weld sets, I'll match drill the rollbar to the angle and should be good to go.
Since I have to wait a day for the JB Weld to set, I moved back over to the pitot. The 3/16" aluminum AOA and pitot tubes have to connect to the 1/4" plastic lines that go to the instruments. I flared the ends of the tubes and connected the flare fitting. The pitot/static kit I bought also provided a metal fitting to connect to the flare fitting and step up to the 1/4" push on tube size. I wasn't sure what to put on those threads. I grabbed some Loctite 567 (basically a thread sealer/gasket kind of thing) and put just the tiniest bit on the first few threads. I also had no idea of torque for these things, so "good n tight" it is.
Routing the plastic pitot/AOA lines to the pitot is another question mark I had to solve. I'm still not sure I've solved it, but gotta start somewhere! The bellcrank is in the way of the lines going to the pitot, so somehow they have to be routed around or under the bellcrank. Because the aluminum pitot lines will be in about the center of the wing (top to bottom), I am going to try to get the plastic lines somewhere in the center as well (meaning I may not even end up using the hole I put in the rib last week - the one I had to fix with the doubler). I grabbed a piece of thin sheet scrap and made a brace to go under the bellcrank bolts and hold the pitot lines in place.
Just for kicks, I pulled the wiring for the lights through the conduit in both wings, labeled them and put the connector on for the position lights. I labeled the wires with clear heat shrink over small labels I printed out. It's not the quickest approach to cut out and slip tiny pieces of paper under the heat shrink, but it seems to work pretty well. I'm sure I'll appreciate the effort down the road when troubleshooting electrical issues.
