Time: 6 Hours
The new firewall arrived last Saturday in prompt fashion from FedEx all crated up and secure from Van’s. Unfortunately, for the build, I had a very busy flight schedule this week flying all 5 days with a couple of overnights in there. That put a pause on the work in the Hangar for the week but I got back at it today. First up was to un-crate the firewall and get to deburring.
What I did get done last week I between flying was to touch up the paint on the parts that I removed from the damaged firewall.
I finished deburring all the edges using a file and sandpaper, man this stainless steel is sharp!
I then final drilled all the holes to their final sizes, this was done in conjunction with the other parts on the first firewall. After that I grabbed the DRDT dimpling machine and dimpled all the required holes. With all that work done I clecko’ed the substructure pars to the firewall for riveting.
As before the best way to rivet these parts is with the back rivet set.
Since I left the bottom support in the forward floor I left all those rivets out as well as both of the bottom engine mounts. This allowed me to slide the firewall back into position.
I was then able to get the remaining rivets with the bucking bar and gun.
Then it was just a matter of returning all the parts I removed to get at the firewall.
So I’m back in business and moving forward again. You might notice that the firewall is no longer resting on the table and is elevated about an inch or so with a couple pieces of 1″x4″ under the gear towers so this doesn’t happen again! Overall this mistake has cost me 10 hours of extra work, not as bad as I was figuring but I don’t want to do it again.
