Day 68

Yesterday with the wind chill it was negative 6 degrees with wind gust over 30 mph. There wasn’t a chance the shop was going to stay warm. Spent the day reviewing the next steps we’d be taking on the project.

Today was a most productive day. It was still cold outside, but the wind wasn’t blowing so we were able to get the shop to a comfortable temperature. We completed the rear seat assembly. This morning we Cleco’ed together the bottom seat assembly, taking care that all the channels overlapped where they were meant to. After it was all Cleco’ed and looked over, it was then riveted all together. The the upper spilt seats were riveted to the bottom assembly. We opted to use back up washers on the hinge rivets to give added strength. There were also three Dzus screws that were riveted onto the upper seat angle bracket.

This afternoon we retrieved the motor mount brackets, seat support angle channels, and other back ordered items that had been shipped by Sling. We were then able to get the motor mount riveted in place. (They were even the right ones this time!) Then Cleco’ed the firewall into place. It takes a little bit of maneuvering to get all the pieces to sandwich together. There are four separate pieces that all have to come together and curve around the outside of the firewall.

1. The skin.

2. A spacer.

3. The Firewall.

4. The Coweling Strip.

Tomorrow we will the firewall to the skin and start placing the insulation on the outside.

We also riveted the Seat Support channels onto the inside of the fuselage now that we had the correct one for the left side.