Rear seat, fuel sight gauges, baffles

I added the rear seat mounts and cut slots in the carpet for them. The seat fits reasonably well onto the mounts, but one of them will require altering slightly for a good fit. I’ll probably drill it out. I’m planning to use quick release pins to secure the seat in place.

Once fitted, I climbed up to try it out. An immediate issue was that my head touched the ceiling, something I hadn’t noticed on other Bearhawks. The solution was to remove the thigh support from the internal foam. There’s now sufficient room and as an added bonus the seat is slightly more comfortable too.

I then started working to completely finish the baffles ready for coating. This included adding holes for the ignition cooling tubes, and drilling holes to rivet the silicon baffle material to. They’re all done now, de-burred and ready for anodising or painting.

I also made some small restrictions in the lower fuel sight gauge AN elbow fittings, using rivets. I squeezed the rivets to fatten them, then used a vice to jam them into the AN fittings. The grinder used to remove the rivet head and I drilled a small orifice. If a leak was to develop upstream, this will restrict the flow in the same manner as the fuel/oil pressure transducers.

This will also stop the fuel from sloshing in the sight gauges and changing the readying rapidly in turbulent air.