It has been an unseasonably hot week here in the desert, it is only March and we are in the mid-90s. Hopefully this will go away for a while, we are not ready for it yet. If we are ever ready.
I realised today that I am subconsciously doing anything but joining the two fuselage halves together, something I thought I was going to have done about a month ago. The front fuse has been sitting on a bench ready to mate for a few weeks now. Was today the day?? No.
First off I flexed my muscles and hand riveted almost all the remaining A6 rivets into the wing attach brackets.
The more I stare the more I think surely the wing must use up some of those holes?? The good news is that these are a breeze to take out. I’ll have to rewatch the wing attach DVD.
It has been forever since we looked at the back of the plane and the rudder hinges have been clecoed in place for a long time. The upper hinge take four bolts so I drilled out the holes with a 3/16″ drill bit.
The lower hinge assembly (if you recall it is made up of three different pieces) takes A5 rivets everywhere it seems. So all the holes got opened up with the size 20 drill bit except for the centre hole which I used a unibit to expand to 5/16″. This larger hole is for the rear tie down ring. Here’s the view inside
and from underneath
Yes, I know what you are thinking – the tie down ring is 90 degrees in the wrong direction. I fixed it after I took the photo.
With really nothing else to do but mate the two fuselage parts I reassembled the baggage area so everything would be ready. It was a bit of a struggle at first because the l-angle stiffeners on the flaperon bearing assembly were too long and wouldn’t let the upper baggage floor sit low enough, so I had to trim them.
From there it was just a repeat of the previous assembly until everything was back in place.
The eagle eyed among you will notice that I riveted the l-angle stiffeners on the baggage floors. I kept running out of copper clecos so it seemed like a good time to do it.
From here the only things that make any sense are to start on the firewall or to join the fuselage parts together. It’s a two person job so next trip to the hangar I will bring Teri with me and get that done. It is going to be a couple of weeks though as I have trips to London and San Francisco coming up over the next week.