Yesterday Teri and I went to the hangar to mate the fuselage parts together finally but it didn’t work out, Teri got a nasty scratch from a skin edge and so we called it quits. So with that put off for another week, the next obvious thing to do is start the firewall. Here are most of the pieces. Unfortunately I didn’t have my regular camera with me so all these photos came off my Galaxy S3 phone.
I’m going to try and follow the video for the order of things, but keep a very close eye on the photo guides to make sure nothing is done wrong. First up is a stiffener than goes inside the bottom edge of the firewall. Clamp it on, drill it out through the predrilled holes.
Turning the firewall over, I clecoed the rear reinforcement in place. In the video they have to mark and trim the corners of the piece to fit but I was very happy to see that the new pieces are pre-formed.
Back on the front I attached the top stiffener.
and the centre stiffener.
The top stiffener gets an l-angle and there are pre-drilled holes in the stiffener and firewall through which to backdrill. So this was a simple case of placing the angle in about the right place, clamping and then drilling through the back. There was very little clearance for the drill on the stiffener side so I removed them and drilled off-firewall.
and all drilled out
Next up is the upper firewall channel which appears to simply cleco in place up against the top stiffener but the instructions call for it to be placed on the back and backdrilled. I had to scratch my head because this just doesn’t make sense, it doesn’t fit for one thing. So I looked at the plans and they seem to me to pretty clearly show it on the front, sitting in the obvious position so I did what the plans and the video said. I can’t believe it can go anywhere or any how but like this
There’s an upper angle that goes on the top stiffener and there are pre-drilled holes to back drill through. So getting the right position left to right is easy but for top to bottom it is easiest to get the forward gusset out and clamp it in place so that the angle can snug up against it. It is much more obvious from this picture
I then backdrilled into the angle.
And then it was lunch time. The next thing to do is lay out some rivet locations in the forward gusset and drilled them into the top stiffener and upper angle. But that’s for next time.