Author Archives: Michael

Oil Door

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Time: 4 Hours

While I’m waiting for the layups to dry on the upper gear leg fairings I decided to tackle the oil door in the engine cowling. Vans cowl has a detent for where the door goes that you need to cut out. They also give you a separate fiberglass door that needs to be trimmed to size. First up was to layout the opening based on the plans. 

Then I drilled four holes in the corners and connected them with my cut off wheel in the Dremel leaving a little extra. I sanded the edges to the lines and smoothed out the corners. 

Trimming the door was pretty easy and I made it so that there was about an 1/16″ gap all the way around it so I could fill it later to get a perfect fit. Last year at OshKosh I bought a hidden oil door hinge from Cleaveland Tools. This hinge serves two purposes, it hides the hinge so you can see it when looking at the cowl and it has a spring loaded to hold the door open. This makes sure that you don’t take off with it unlatched. I first needed to layout the half that goes on the cowl. It needs to just clear the lip of the cowl so I used two layers of electrical tape to create a gap.

Once that was done I drilled four holes in the hinge and then matched drilled them to the cowl. I then put the door in place with tape to match drill the other half of the hinge to the door. 

I cleaned up the holes and countersunk them for flush rivets. I made quick work of them with the pneumatic squeezer. 

You have several options to secure the door when closed. I decided to use a hinge to close mine. Half of the hinge will be riveted to the door and the other half to the cowl. When the door is closed I will slide the pin in and connect the two half’s together. This pin will be long enough to go into the forward baggage area, more on that later in the build.


To help beef up the door I took the piece of cowl I cut out and sized it to fit the door. I then drilled for rivets and the other half of the hinge. 

I riveted the support and hinge to the door and checked the fit. I needed to tweak the hinge a little to get it to sit perfect. 

The door sits down just a little all the way around plus I wanted to cover up the rivets so I cut out three layers of light cloth and do a lay up over the door. 

I will trim the edges once dry and sand them so I can fill the gap with it in place. Overall it looks great and functions perfect. I will get the surface perfect after I reinstall it. 

Wings back on

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Time: 2 Hours

Finally after getting the dual fuel setup at the workshop, I worked a little in the shop today after being gone for a week for my six month recurrent training in the Lear 45. I finished up the wheel pants where I had filled in some holes and reprimed them. I’m calling those done and removed them for storage until flying time. I helped my buddy Glenn remove his wings now that he has all gear leg Fairings done. After rearranging the shop plus a little sweeping we move my RV into position so I could put the wings on. I’m doing this for two reasons, first to be able to do the fairings from the top of the gear legs to the fuselage/wing and the second is one last fuel leak test. Glenn had 20 gallons of 100LL that he used for his test and he let me have it for mine.

So the fuel went into the left wing and will sit for a week while I’m at the NBAA convention in Las Vegas. If there is no blue stains on the bottom or the paper I laid out I’ll call the a passing test and transfer the fuel to the right wing for its test. I’m slowly getting tasks done ahead of my engine build school, 34 days and counting down.

Pilot Shoulder Strap Clip

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Time: 2 Hours

One thing I have read about is the complaints of how the pilots shoulder straps don’t stay into position on the roll bar behind their seat. The straps are held on with a loop of the strap around the roll bar. Since the roll bar extends outward for a little bit and bends downward the straps have nothing to retain them and can slide outward. This means you have to fidget with them to get them into position. Big deal? No but since I have time on my hands I decided to come up with a solution. In the shop I have these wall units that have a bunch of little drawers in them. They are clear plastic and house all my rivets, screws and so on. I have had them since I started my build. Anyways these set of drawers came with these flat clips on the back that you could use to hang on the wall. These clips were meant to slid into a receptacle that would get screwed to the wall. I held on to these receptacles for some reason. While I was digging thru some parts I found them and a light bulb went off. They were the same width on the inside as the width of the shoulder straps. So I devised a plan to screw these to the underside of the roll bar to hold the straps in place. You may be having a hard time picturing these but in the following photos hopefully they make sense. First I did some test while sitting in the seat as to where I wanted these to align on the roll bar so they were comfortable. Then I marked the location and removed all the parts. I fine tuned the marks on tape that I put around the roll bar to protect the paint. To get the two holes aligned and marked for drilling I attached them to the roll bar with zip ties. In the photo you see the clip zip tied with two small washers taped to the clips. This was to make up the space of the clip so the zip tie didn’t squeeze the clip too much so I could get a good mark on the holes.

Now you have an idea what these clips looked like. On each end is a hole that’s countersunk for a flat head screw. This hole fits a #8 screw perfectly. So I marked the holes through the clips onto the tape after I had them aligned along the roll bar. I removed the zip ties and the clips and drilled and tapped for #8 screws while laying down inside the fuselage. I tell you having a bunch of Harbor Freight moving blankets is key to protect your back from all the protruding parts. With the holes drilled, tapped and cleaned up I put then shoulder straps in place and attached the clips with screws.

Another little project done and making progress. Simple yet effective solution to a problem.

Canopy Skirt Seal

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Time: 2 Hours

Earlier on in the canopy build I installed a felt strip running along the inside bottom edge of the canopy skirt. This was supposed to help seal the gap between the skirt and fuselage when the canopy was closed and reduce wind infiltration. After the canopy was all done I wasn’t happy with the end result, at least how it looked. So while I had the canopy off to Pro-Seal the aft end I decided this would be a good time to fix it. So I worked for 1.5 Hours pulling the felt off, rubbing and using Goo-Gone to get all the 3M adhesive off. I worked slowly so I wouldn’t damage the paint while I removed it. After I cleaned the skirt up and had all the residue removed I replaced the felt with a adhesives backed 1/8” x 1/2” foam strip. Here is what it looks like now and I’ll see how it seals when I replace the canopy back on the fuselage.

The nice thing about this stuff is that it will be easy to replace when needed.

Pro-Sealing

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Time: 3 Hours

I removed the canopy structure and flipped it over into the cradle. I have a slight “squeak” when the aft section of skirt moves. It sounds like it’s the fiberglass skirt rubbing or moving ever so slightly on the canopy. So I decided that I would fill the gap between the skirt/canopy and the canopy/frame with pro-seal. I taped it all off to protect the areas that I didn’t want to get a mess on. I also taped of the inside of the forward baggage area were the top skin meets the firewall for sealing that gap while I was gonna have the pro-seal out.

I bought the premeasured type from Aircraft Spruce that fits in the special gun.

After the required mixing I went to it making sure I had all the required items out for clean up including the MEK and tons of rags…this stuff is messy!

With a quick pull of the tape while it was still wet I had nice clean lines. Hopefully the squeak will be gone once this cures in a few days.