Lindy
5/5/2007
The part I have ordered from Van's shipped on Wednesday this past week, but who knows how long that will take to get to me. Since it's not here, it gave me some time to work on a couple of things that needed to be wrapped up before the skins come off for deburring and dimpling.
I started this morning by drilling the bottom forward skin to the bottom firewall angle and FW flange.
I had enough cleco's to get me to this point, but when I cleco the aux longeron back on the skin, that will run me dry. Just enough!
Next I drilled the hole thru the skin and gear web attach plate for the fuel lines on each side. My Unibit only goes to 7/8", so I still need to open this to one inch.
John Sannizzaro (Captain John) gave me a good idea a few weeks back to make the F-623 baggage floor side rib clips out of thicker stock than what the plans call for. I completely agree with what he said, so I remade mine today out of some .05 angle that I cut in half. Below you can see the originals in white, and the angle already cut in half.
After all the usual stuff, they are finished in the thicker metal for better strength in that area. The last thing I had to do was to drill the holes for the fuel vent line in the bottom forward skin. There is one on each side.
That's about all the stuff I needed to do before the skins come off, so I decided to work on my flap handle. This doesn't really need to be done right now, but since I don't have anything else to do at this point...I began by measuring and cutting the grip handle down a bit. This was a piece of advise from another builder working on his own manual flap system. Then I ran out to the airport to use the bead blaster to try and remove the powder coating ($45 down the drain...) that I had put on originally; mainly because I want to be red, and I had to remove some previously for the cut and weld I had done. Powdercoating is tough stuff!! I had to use a wire wheel in a bench grinder to get most of it off!! After I roughed it up, I brought it home to sand it with some fine files and emery cloth. It's lookin' really good, and is ready to be re-powdercoated.
So that's it until my part comes in. Stay tuned...
4.75 hours