These doors are complicated, and time consuming!
We (well, Allen) spent some time trimming the passenger side door for a better fit up against the windshield trim. Need to do it for the pilot side but there’s a lot more to take off on that side.
With the hinge only held in place with clecos there’s quite a bit of play in the position of the door so I riveted both hinges in place (after the usual deburring and priming of course).
There is a forward and a rear latch mechanism, connected in the middle by a centre piece that pivots with the door handle and pulls a rear latch pin back and forward. This then makes three contact points with the frame to keep the door shut tight (future spoiler alert: I think I’m going to need something better to stop the door opening). We held the latch in place, drew around it and drilled the three holes.
Connecting the forward rod to the two pieces it was obvious that there was too much stress on the rod and, most importantly, when locked the centre latch was not vertical and in contact with the frame.
Not much we could do but move the latch one hole further down and this gave us a near perfect fit.
There’s a rear latch pin guide that goes on the rear of the door that guides the rear pin into position. There’s a gotcha to beware of here – if you draw a centre line on the bottom of the guide, the holes are almost too close to the curve of the guide on the top. After drilling a pilot hole we used the drill press and a piece of steel to guide the enlarged holes away from the curve. The nuts fit but I’ll have to file down the washers.
Allen used the metal grinder to remove the corner for a better fit against the door tubes.
Here’s what the whole latch mechanism on the door looks like
Next up is to install the latch mechanism on the fuselage that the rod goes into that holds the back of the door in place. This was all done on the passenger side door, but I did get the front latch mechanism onto the pilot side.
Starting to think about fuel lines and brake lines, also need to make another attempt to get an engine hoist to put the engine on for the first time.