Day 182

Well, the dashboard has turned out to be a lot more work than I would have thought. It comes to us already upholstered, but I’m not sure how much care is taken to make sure it is correct. I had it in and out of the plane a half a dozen times, trying to get it to look right in the plane. The manual tell you to place it with the backs of the edges resting flush with the canopy edge. But when I would do this, it would not be square to the pilot. It would be off by a 1/2 inch from side to side. Thought maybe we had messed up on the canopy… But when I measured it it was less than a 1/16 inch side to side. Well within tolerance. Also know the front top skin was centered and square when it was installed. Remeasured everything and could not find anything on the plane itself to be out of square… This only leaves the composite dashboard to not be correct. There unfortunately is nothing really that can be done to alter it. It was decided the most important thing would be for the instrument panel to be square to the pilot. Measuring from the Main Spar, which everything in the plane is squared off of, we measured to each corner of the instrument panel until each was the same distance. The difference between side to side is about 1/4inch now. Shouldn’t be too noticeable once the rest of the interior is in.

We also got the fuel selector panel lined up and set in place. While doing this we discovered that the fittings on the fuel selector stuck out too far to fit down in the hole. So we disassemble it and were able to use the vice to turn them down a few more turns. This made it just fit.

The front lip of the composite also needed to be trimmed to facilitate the port for the window defrost vent tube. About a quarter of it was covered by the lip would would it have allowed the heat to distribute properly to the vents.

Another thing that make us believe the composite was not quite right, the holes for the lower dash supports did not have enough product to bight into. So we modified them to work by tracing where they sat and drilled new holes where they would have the most product to bite onto. We then put a pair of M5 rivet nuts so that once the dash is installed, it will be easy to bolt down.

Now the angle brackets can be painted and riveted in afterwards.

We also bolted the dash panel into place. We decided not to use rivet nuts because there was just not enough edge to support them very well. Had the dashboard in and out of the plane so many times this way that it will it won’t be an issue having it already installed.

We even set the front windshield on to see how it would look.