Time: 8 Hours
The wings have two Flashing’s, forward and aft, that cover up the open space between the wings and fuselage. They will be held onto the wings with screws and have a rubber seal on the edge the meets up with the fuselage to make a tight seal. The aft one isn’t too bad after you remove enough material so that you can access the holes in the wing through the holes in the flashing. I removed just enough of the inboard edge to get the flashing to fit without touching the fuselage. The forward flashing was a little more work as you have to bend it around the wing to get it to fit nice and tight. Once you get that fit just right you match for all the holes that are in the flashing through undrilled skin of the fuel tank flange.
With The flashings in place I used my compass with a fine tipped blue sharpie to draw a line 3/16″ away from the fuselage onto the flashing’s. I will remove this material to allow for the rubber seal that will get placed on there later.
Before I moved onto the left-wing I wanted to finish up the instrument panel not plates as they were sitting on my bench taking up space.
Now I just need to paint this its final color and I can screw it into position. Now I just need the avionics to add to the panel! I moved on to the left wings flashing’s repeating the steps I did on the right wing.
From here I removed both sides and trimmed up to the 3/16″ line I made to make room for the gap seal. I then reinstalled the flashing’s so that I could work on the flap fairing’s. You have to manipulate these a little to get a good fit with the top of the flap and the curved portion of the fuselage. Once I had a good fit with the right one I taped/clamped it into position so that I could match drill the forward top holes through the fuselage into this fairing.
I drilled each end and then worked down the line.
Once I had that line done I worked my way aft on the top and bottom making sure everything was fitting tight.
I repeated these steps on the left side and was pretty happy with the results.
That’s where I stopped for the day, good progress and feels good to have the major work done on these flashing’s and fairing’s. I still need to fine tune the areas where the flashing’s and fairing’s meet. Then I will clean up all the edges and enlarge the holes to a #19 for #8 screws that will hold them in place when I’m done. Looks more like an RV-8 every day!
