Glue Technique Tip -
As the total thickness builds up, you may need longer rivets. Buy them early and you will have them when you need them.
When that riveting work was done, I really truly had a canoe.
Back when I ordered the finish kit, I ordered a clear Todd?s canopy. More recently, I decided that a light tint would be better. Lance Logan now has canopies available. He took over Todd?s equipment. Lance Logan is the supplier to Spruce, so I had the option of ordering direct or through Spruce. I discussed it with Lance and decided to get it directly from him. The quality of the pre-purchase assistance was terrific.
I chose the 2515 Light Smoke, which blocks 88% of UVa and 99% of UVb. The other easy option was 2094 Gray. Lance sent a sample of both and the decision was pretty easy. The 2094 is pretty dark.
I sent a check and very shortly afterwards, a canopy arrived. And I do mean shortly.
First, here?s the earlier canopy that Todd?s sent, the clear one.
Next, here?s the new one that AeroCanopy sent.
There were some differences in how they were packaged and in a few other things, but all in all, I?m very satisfied with the new one.
Way back when I was assembling the firewall, what I should have done was take the engine mount and the firewall to a machinist friend and have him match the firewall holes to the engine mount. Then I could have used bushings to hold them to the 1/4? hardware on the jig.
But I didn?t. None of the firewall holes were drilled, of course, since this is an RV-3B, but they were center-punched to mark their location. That was nice of them. I determined that the middle two hole locations were somewhat close and that I could use them as a starting place to align and drill the outer four holes, which were, if not located properly, at least on the same firewall.
Drilling them from 1/4? to 3/8? was easy. For the two middle mount holes, I used a Harbor Freight Unibit clone and that left holes just slightly under 3/8?. I finished them with a reamer and those fit the engine mount. Since I lost the AN6-53 bolts that it?ll take to bolt them to the firewall, I bought some hardware store bolts for the job. No worries, they?ll be replaced. This won?t be permanent for a while yet anyway.
The outer four holes were visible through the engine mount?s attachment holes but that?s about all I could say for them. What to do?
I discussed it with the aforementioned machinist friend and decided to get some bushings.
First, I bushed the holes down to 1/4? and used a slightly undersized twist drill to walk the firewall holes closer to center, followed by the 1/4? reamer.
Second, I removed that bushing and the remaining bushing had a 5/16? bore. I did the same thing, using undersized twist drills to get close, and then the 5/16? reamer.
Last, I repeated the process with no bushings, ending up with 3/8? coaxial holes in the firewall and engine mount that the bolts would go into.
How was it? The first bolt with the bushings was very slow but not especially difficult. Learning curve, you know. The remaining bolts went quickly. At the conclusion, the engine mount was temporarily bolted to the fuselage.
Goody - a convenient place to grab when moving the fuselage around.
I rotated the fuselage upside down - geez, that looks familiar - and discovered that with a sawhorse under the upper longerons forward of the panel, I could level it by shifting one sawhorse end fore or aft. When level, I marked the location.
Upon trial fitting the main gear legs, guess what? they don?t go in their sockets. I had to decide whether to reduce the legs or open the sockets. Turns out that the gear legs are 1.375? diameter but the ends of the engine mount sockets are about 1.365?, or .010 smaller for the diameter. I thought that this was due to some excess cadmium plating that migrated into the sockets. The plating company assured me that they?d mask those holes. Looks like they gave me a headache instead. Later I discovered that the plating made a minuscule difference, and that the fit is what the factory sent. No worries, it's an RV-3B, and I signed up for this.
I bought a brake cylinder hone tool. I had never used one of these but heck, it?s a tool right? And I?m a proud member of a toll-using species, right? Plus I have an aptitude for mechanical things. How hard can this be?
Turns out that it wasn?t hard, just tedious. First, the tool.
I dipped the stones in alcohol and ran it on partial speed at about 40 psi, for about 30 seconds at a time. I didn?t want to burn out the stones but I really didn?t want to have the sockets get too loose. Here?s a photo of my doing the honing thing on the top of the right-hand socket. One thing to be careful about is to stay on the internal boss and neither get past it nor remove the tool while the stones are spinning.
It took about fifteen passes to get the top end of the right-hand landing gear strut past the bottom part of the socket. I was still about 1/4? shy from being able to insert the strut all the way. One more thing that I wanted to avoid was getting the strut stuck in the socket so that I couldn?t remove it or adjust it. I made a couple more passes with the hone and then put it all away. I ordered a replacement set of stones and they?re about a week out.
But no worries, there are plenty of things to work on. I started one of those.
Also at
Todd's canopy, AeroCanopy canopy, Engine mount attached, hone tool, and
actual honing.
Dave