Rv-10 door fit problem

Hello everyone, Walt Fuller here. My father (cpt. Delta retired) and I are in the process of fitting the doors to the fiberglass cabin top. In doing so, we realized we had cut off too much of the "flange" along the inside of the cabin door openings. There is a considerable gap between door and cabin door openings now. When we trimmed the cabin, we followed a "scribe line" which was on the cabin when it was shipped. It was a bit hard to see but visible none the less.
Maybe we misinterpreted the plans...bottom line is we "scewed up" somehow.
There is not enough material for the door seals to contact. I was hoping that we were not the first builders to experience this and that maybe someone else could offer a fix (quick if possible) to this scenario. Thank you...
ps. We built, flew, and sold one van's RV-4's in the early 90's. N52FK

Walt, me too

My helper did the exact same thing 2 weeks ago and got wild with the die grinder and we have about an 1/8 gap. The scribe lines were almost impossible to follow. I havent decided on how to fix this, but one consideration is epoxy and flock molded on with peel ply. Our problem is only across the sill. up the sides and across the top we came out ok. I am also considering use of a different door seal. Im in the same fix as you

Walt,

The beautiful thing about fiberglass is that it is easy to fix (in most cases). I am not familiar with the -10 but it sounds like you could fix this with some aluminum tape and some glass. Use the Al tape to overlap one side of the existing flange and extend it a bit oversize from what you cut off. Cover the Al tape (sticky side) with box sealing tape and glass on a new flange. Once cured you can remove the box and Al tape and glass the other side of the flange and you are done. Hard to explain.

Do you have a picture?

Ryan

Maybe not a problem at all?

Walt - are you sure you have a problem? The door seals have a generous cross section and make contact with the deepest part of the canopy "channels". The inner flange when finished will leave a 1/8 or so gap to the door shell. You'll need that gap if you apply door fabric.

Brian
RV-10
N104BS
Nashville, TN

Welcome to VAF!!!!

Hey Walt, welcome to the force

Good to have you here, I think you will be pleased with the site.

As mentioned above, fiberglass is easy to make repairs on, also, correctly stated that the factory seal is pretty large in cross section.

Build on.

Walt,
Early on, I was "mislead" by the scribe lines and made my cuts. When I actually installed the doors, I was really upset that I had cut way too much off the door frame channels. I called Van's, discussed it with them. Figured if I absolutely had to get new door frames (whole new canopy top) and redo it-no putting it off.

Van's asked me to send some pictures for their engineers to look at. I emailed four or five pictures of the cuts and channel. Had a reply the next day. NO PROBLEM. Plenty of channel left for strength. Haven't worried about it since.

The weird thing is, when I finally got to putting in seal in space between door and channel, I had to trim a little bit more off to get a good seal.

Tom Hanaway
Boynton Beach, FL

Walt, we recently painted an RV-10 that had so much cut off of the frame that there really wasn't enough room for the weatherstripping to touch anything, much less compress into a seal. Luckily, the owner realized this might be a problem and saved the pieces he removed. We simply floxed and glassed them back into position, retrimmed, bodyworked, painted and reinstalled the seal.

Brad Simmons
Airframes Inc.
Milan, TN
731-686-3610

How about some pictures?

Walt,
I did the same thing. I plan on building it back up with flox and peel ply. I'm not losing any sleep over it.
John

Thanks Mike for the welcome, and everyone for their help! Whether or not a fix will be made is up to the captain Everyone's post has certainly put his mind at ease, and he is considering all options. It does'nt sound like we made a critical " boo boo". Its good to have access to such a useful and friendly forum. Ron B., I will post some pictures of the build very soon. Thanks again!

Ryans suggestion with the aluminum tape should work well for the repair.

I like to first trace over scribe lines with an extremely fine-point marker. Afterwards, I can see it clearly while I trim.

-David

Ron B. said:

How about some pictures?

Click to expand...

Here is a link to a short slide show of the build...I will post some better pictures soon.

http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&videoid=100395192

There are three key techniques to getting perfect fitting doors with minimal time and effort. Unfortunately, no body knows what those techniques are.

I thought I had taken too much off the flange too. At first, I had a crooked gap between the door and flange but that was before attaching hinges and the latch mechanism. Once these were in place, the door was pulled in some more and the gap narrowed considerably. Then I had to allow for a fabric covering that I am going to glue to the door. Now my gap looks consistent and tight. So it depends on where you are in the fit process.

Someday I will be finished with the doors.......