Tonight (and last night), I spent time installing the seatbelts. These are 5-point Hooker harnesses, and they look great! The install was a case of simply bolting each point on, and touring the nuts. Except, the bushings on some of the points needed to be ground down to be able to fit within the various hard points on the aircraft.
Over the last few evenings I have spent time inspecting the wiring behind the panel. I made a few adjustments to ease bend radii, address some potential chafing, and finally to safety wire the connectors into the various components behind the panel. This required removing a few plugs for access, and then making a best effort to safety wire the connectors screws. Given limited access, it’s not my best safety wiring work, but it’ll get the job done.
This weekend I decided it was time to install the firewall passthrough fire-proofing sleeves that secure the wiring bundles. There are two on the RV-14, and on my setup I have the main power cables going through one, and the smaller sensor data cables going through the other.
First I confirmed there was mother else that I’d forgotten to route through the firewall. In an attempt to future-proof the setup, I ran three spare wires through the firewall. Each is long enough to run from any point on the panel to any point in most places in the engine compartment.
I figured out quickly that Vans’ plans could use an update. There’s no way to wrap the bundle of wires with the supplied fire sleeve the way they describe. However, rotating the fire sleeve 90 degrees allows you to cut it to a useful dimension. Once the fire sleeve is pushed through the opening, it’s filled with high temp RTV, then wrapped with a second layer of fire sleeve, and secured with safety wire.
I was happy with how this turned out, especially after reading other reports of a messy and difficult job.
When applying the RTV, I used a flat plastic bag (a cake decorating bag) with a small opening. This helped to get the RTV down into the tight spaces between wires, and allowed me to attack it from both sides of the wire wall.
Today I installed new Deutch connectors on the control stick wiring. This is my third attempt to wire the sticks up, the previous two were either too bulky, or too insecure. the deutch connectors have a nice backshell that holds d-sub pins and keeps the pins in perfect alignment. The backshells have a sturdy latch, and can be fairly easily mounted.
I cut off the molex bracket from the control stick bases. This allowed the new connectors to sit close to the control stick, minimizing the potential interference. I installed the deutch d-sub pins, and then mounted the connectors.
I installed the passenger side to check clearances, and then replicated for the pilot side. I won’t install the pilot side sticker just yet as I’m going to be working under the panel next.
The last step was to glue the mount onto the stick base with some epoxy glue. I roughed up the mount’s surface, and the powder coating on the stick base before glueing the mount’s surface on.
Over the last couple of weeks, Dad and I worked on the elevator and horizontal stabilizer fairings. Dad spent a lot of time getting the fairings to fit just right: trimming, glueing/glassing, sanding, and repeat. These fairings fit very well, and the gap between the HS and Elevator fairing is exactly where it should be. Dad was able to add a little curve to the aft edge of the HS fairing, which allows for a constant gap between the forward edge of the elevator fairing and the HS fairing, throughout the full range of elevator travel.
We also spent time sealing the area around the counterweight on the inside of the elevator tip, leaving one small exit hole on the aft end for draining any water that makes it into the elevator tip. Hopefully the sealant will keep any water penetration to a minimum.
Despite Dad’s near perfect fairing between the aluminum and fiberglass, once I started riveting the fairings, the rivets introduced a little bit of pillowing. It’ll need one more pass to fair it out before it’s final painted.
My parents were visiting for the month of July, and during that time, Dad and I worked on the wheel pants. These turned out to be rather time consuming, and having Dad’s help was amazing. As a boat builder by trade, Dad’s an expert at working with fiberglass, amongst many other skills. The quality of his work and attention to detail are second only to his work ethic. Despite turning 80 this year, Dad was working in the garage from 7am until 10pm each day. He was working up until the last minute, and managed to see the wheel pants through to completion. Thanks Dad!!
I didn’t realize how long the wheel pants section was in the Vans instructions. Part of it is the details they provide on each step to prepare and finish the fiberglass parts. Despite the length of the instructions, we found there were some things missing that would have been super helpful. For example, some dimensions of how the pants should sit, relative to a level ground, would have allowed us to verify placement, before final drilling the pants.
A lot of the work involved fitting and finishing the pants, the gear leg fairings, and the upper and lower gap fairings. Lots of filling and sanding to get things to line up correctly and to fair out the transitions between parts.
In hindsight, it might have been worth looking at some 3rd party wheel pants, just to save some time. I’m happy with how the parts turned out, although I’m sure there will be a little more work before they are ready to be painted.
After mum and dad left, I painted the parts with Stuart Systems Ecoprime, a two part epoxy primer.
I’d been delaying installing the rear window as long as possible, because access to the baggage area is much easier without it in place. But with Dad here, and with the list of tasks shortening up, it was time to get it done.
We started by carefully masking the window per the Vans plans. We also added some tape to the window to allow us to paint a thin stripe of dark grey on the canopy to obscure the tank sealant.
For paint, I used Stuart Systems Ecopoxy, and brushed it on. It took a couple of coats of paint, but the result was good. With the paint dry, we proceeded to mix up the tank sealant, find all the required hardware, and then start the process.
Rather than following the Vans plans exactly, I took the advice from Ken’s blog (https://vansrv14project.uk), which worked out well. Using a cake decorating plastic bag I was able to easily place the sealant exactly where it was needed. Once the sealant had been squeezed into the gap, we installed the screws and nuts. Dad worked on the outside while I sat I. The baggage area and torqued up the nuts.
Once the task was complete, we let the window sit for an hour, then carefully inspected it, and then removed all the tape. some of the sealant had squeezed out, but it was a tidy job overall.
Rather than just using silicone on the screws along the leading edge, I took the time to seal the leading edge with silicone. I really don’t want the window to leak, and without any kind of sealant, I’m sure water would easily make its way into the baggage compartment.
With Dad’s help over the last few days we fit the tail fairings. This required some filling and sanding of the fiberglass fairing that fits between the VS and HS, as well as trimming an d fitting two aluminum fairings on each side, under the HS.
Part of the fitting process involved locating holes in the fiberglass to line up with the nutplates in the aft fuselage. Dad painstakingly measured the location of the holes before drilling them, ending up with a perfect fit.
I primed the parts alongside some of the other fiberglass fairings, and these are good to go now.
Today I installed the steps. I had a local plating shop give these a black matte powdercoat, and then stuck some peel-and-stick grip tape on as an anti-slip. It looks great! I don’t know what the eventual paint scheme will be, but the black matte should go with just about everything.
Installing the steps was fairly straightforward. Without the rear window in, I could stand on the ground and reach through the rear window frame and access the bolts. It took a universal adapter on the socket to torque the bottom nut, but otherwise access wasn’t an issue. I was happy with the snug fit, as these will undergo regular torque changes as people climb aboard, and any movement would be a problem.
Over the last couple of weeks I’ve been working on installing the interior. This is a kit from Classic Aero, and everything is well designed and manufactured.
There are a number of holes to be drilled, fittings to install, and a few minor adjustments. The kit comes with a set of templates which make locating the holes a non-issue. Once the fittings are installed, the various components can be fitted into position. Most attach with simple studs and bolts, and some pop rivets here and there.
This wasn’t weeks worth of work, but chipping away in the evenings, I spent around 8-10 hours in total.
With everything installed, the interior looks amazing. Unfortunately I have to uninstall most of it so I can complete the wing attach, so after verifying I had all the right parts, and that the fit correctly, a lot of the components came right back out again.
I’m glad I tackled this now, because I found that the seatbelts were not in the kit. A quick email exchange with Classic Aero, and they confirmed they had forgotten to order the seatbelts. The placed the order, and they should be here in 3-4 weeks.
