Tonight I spent a few minutes installing the seatbelt shoulder harness cables. These mount to the seatbelt lugs, which are located at the baggage area rear bulkhead. The cables protrude forward and allow a seatbelt shoulder harness to attach at a location just behind the seats. Small job, but needs to be done.
Then I decided to finally open up the engine box. This has been sitting unopened since the engine arrived in January. It was exciting to see the engine, if only the top portion. I took out the documentation and spent time reading through it.
Top of the engine. It’s wrapped in plastic and encased in foam to keep to protected. inside, it has preservative oil to prevent corrosion while it sits waiting to be run. The seat belt shoulder cablesSelfie, for fun
Tonight I only had a few minutes to work on the plane, so I bolted the flap door assembly to the tunnel cover. It was fun to play with the flap door mechanism, and once again admire the precision of these pre-punched parts.
Flap door sitting inside the tunnel cover. This whole assembly is screwed onto the bottom of the fuselage immediately behind the cowling
With guidance from Vans, I trimmed about 1/16th off the leading edge of the cable clamp bracket, then primed it., match drilled it, and riveted into place.
A small notch was needed to obtain sufficient clearance Bracket riveted into place
Tonight I fixed the two challenging nut plates, and then cleaned and installed tape on the sides of the exit door. I tried to install the cable support assembly, but ran into an interference issue with the engine mount.
I ended up not replacing the nut plates. I was able to eventually work a screw into one hole, which seemed to clear it, and subsequent screw installations were fine. In the other hole I used a tap to just start a thread, maybe 2-3 rotations, and that was sufficient to allow the screw to go in.
The tape on the exit door was trivial to install, although I found it harder to cut cleanly than I would have liked. I may have to finesse it a little when the time comes to install it for the final time.
The problem that stumped me was the interference between the engine mount and the cable support assembly. I emailed Vans to see if I can safely trim the support to create some clearance between the two. The holes are pre-punched, and the parts are all pre-formed at the factory, so it’s weird that they don’t fit well together. I would need to remove about 1/32 or 1/16 to allow the cable support bracket to clear the engine mount.
UHMW tape installed on one side of the exit door assemblyIn the bottom center of this image, you can see the cable support bracket contacting the edge of the engine mount.
Today I installed the panel that covers the exhaust channel, and match drilled the 4 holes along the forward edge.
I was able to easily install screws in 8 of the 10 nut plates, but 2 of them are refusing to accept screws. The 2 nut plates are slightly misaligned, so I’ll need to remove them and re-install them. The aft-most nut plate will be the hardest to remove as it’s underneath the seat and the seat ribs will make access particularly challenging. Just one more job for the to-do list.
Offending nut plate holes circled in red. Match-drilled holes visible along the forward edge.
In other news, the firewall forward kit arrived today. The only thing missing is the exhaust, which is on backorder with a 4-6 week delivery estimate. That’s fine, as I have everything I need to get the engine ready to be hung.
Today I countersunk the cowl flap and riveted together the flap unit. Everything was straightforward except one rivet that was repeatedly problematic. The rivet tipped 3 times, and each time I removed it, before I was finally able to set it. Even the last time I set the rivet it tipped over, but I decided it was good enough.
Tonight I primed the various aluminum parts that make up the cowl flap. It’s been a while since I painted with my gun, so everything felt a little strange. I spilled most of the paint right before I started painting, making quite a mess, but mostly contained to the cardboard I was painting on. I had forgotten to fasten the screw cap, and the top of the plastic paint container just popped off and spilled everywhere. Ah well, I still had enough paint to finish the job.
Painted parts. Note the splotch of spilled paint on the bottom right corner of the cardboard.
Tonight I started deburring the parts for the cowl flap, which is a modification for the EXP119 engine I am going to install.
The cowl flap has a door that can be rotated into an open position to help cool the engine. The door mounts onto a sheet of thick aluminum that covers up the original exhaust channel. The exhaust is re-routed so it comes out of the engine compartment forward of the channel. At least, I think that’s how it works, we’ll find out.
Tonight I was able to set the plane onto it’s wheels, which was a big milestone! It’s awesome to see the way it sits on the ground, the angle of the fuselage, and to be able to move the whole thing more easily.
First, I torqued up the wheel nuts to 220 inch pounds and installed the cotter pins. I had been waiting on a socket adapter that finally showed up. I had anticipated needing help to set the plane on it’s wheels, but I found a solution that worked well with just one person. I slid some lengths of 3/4 inch plywood under each main wheel, 3 per side, and then chocked the mains. That allowed me to raise the tail a couple more inches, and hold it in place using a step ladder. Then I could remove the bench that the fuselage had been sitting on, and the saw horse that was holding up the tail. It was then simple to unchock the wheels and roll it off the plywood boards.
Wheels on and resting on the benchBench removed and sitting on the wheels for the first time
