Showplanes now offers a custom baffle kit that fits much more easily with their cowl and intake system, so I got that:
Showplanes baffle kit parts
The main part of the modification is to cut off the ramp part of the stock forward baffle parts, and replace them with the Showplanes-provided ramps (as a separate part that will be riveted together):
Forward baffle assemblies with the ramp replaced by Showplanes'
Left baffle ramp in place
Left baffle ramp and cylinder 2 baffle
Right baffle ramp and forward baffles in place
I had to again remove the governor bracket to get the left forward baffle in, but it fits quite nicely:
Forward baffle in place around governor
All baffles in place
For the EFII tach wire, I opened a slot to get it in, to be held in place with a grommet:
Right forward baffle with tach wire going through it
At this point, after some minor trimming, the forward baffles fit in place and I attached the forward center bracket to the engine case - which required some trimming due to the odd shape of the engine case opening - and match-drilled it into the baffles:
Forward center bracket attached to engine and (temporarily) attached to baffles
Forward center bracket sitting in place, trimmed to fit the engine case opening
We also fabricated the cylinder baffle clips and match-drilled them in place:
Baffle clips
Baffle clips clecoed in place
Finally, I started test fitting the plenum, which will clearly need some work - both to connect it to the cowl air intake openings, and to align (and seal) the oil door opening:
Plenum sitting in place
Plenum oil door opening
One thing we didn't do yet was to bend the forward portion of the cylinder 1/2 baffles, to support the air ramps. We were waiting for the intake system to be sufficiently positioned that we were comfortable taking away the play that the ramps have there - so that'll come next.
Our previous attempt at making the oil door resulted in one that was not flush - I guess it just cured at a slightly wrong shape - so we started over and did it again:
Cowl with slightly raised oil door
New oil door, trimmed and clecoed down
We made a small ramp for the hinge to sit straight without bending:
Fiberglass strips to make oil door hinge ramp
Oil door hinge ramp cured in place
Removing the oil door after hinge ramp cured
Oil door hinge ramp after sanding
Oil door attached to hinge, with ramp
I attached the stainless steel reinforcements to the flange, so the latches wouldn't eat away the fiberglass over time:
Oil door flange reinforcements riveted in place
We then installed the core and applied a couple layers of fiber to the whole door, and this time we let it cure in place, clecoed down to retain the shape (and even retain the right shape around the reinforcements) - which worked:
Oil door core layup curing in place
Oil door after core layup curing
Oil door sitting in place after layup cured
For the latches, I drilled and clecoed the latches in just the right position to catch it but to still release when pressed:
Oil door latches clecoed in place
Because of the additional thickness of the reinforcements, they had to be raised inwards slightly, so I made some spacers from 0.032" aluminum:
Oil door latch spacers in place
Oil door latches raised by spacers (before trimming the spacers down)
The button holes required some care - the lever moves at an angle (the button rotates around the latch attachment point), so the final hole location is not exactly underneath where it sits before drilling the hole:
Oil door with button holes finalized
We then started working on the nose gear fairings that come with the Showplanes cowl, and drilled holes to secure them to the cowl, bottom skin, and each other:
It's a duck! Or a nose gear forward fairing
Nose gear fairings attached together for drilling screw holes
Drilling holes to attach the nose gear fairings to the cowl
We still need to finish the attachment of those fairings, permanently attached the oil door, and install nutplates on the foward side of the cowl.
As a very last item in section 41 - when I installed the panel, I didn't know how we'd secure the throttle, prop and heat cables around the pedals, so I left several holes unriveted to have the option of using F-1083 for holding the cables. Since we now know that won't be necessary, I filled those holes that were also shared with the cutout doubler with CherryMax rivets:
Subpanel cutout doubler fully riveted
Time lapse:
Total upper forward fuselage installation rivets: 157
Total upper forward fuselage installation time: 42.9h
As an additional item in section 9, I confirmed that it'd be very hard to screw in the trim cable brackets onto the trim cables with any precision, so I separated the brackets and modified the holes so they're attached with screws instead:
Pitch trim cable brackets attached with screws instead of rivets
You'll start seeing more and more short posts and videos, simply because we're wrapping things up so there's not much to do.
I installed the rear shoulder harnesses:
Rear shoulder harnesses attached to the tailcone anchor cables
Rear seat belts and shoulder harnesses in place
For the forward ones, I had to use slightly longer bolts to account for the Aerosport headliner spacer (AN517-5-12 was about right, with two washers - could probably have been a -10 without any):
Front shoulder harnesses attached in place
Front shoulder harnesses hanging from overhead console
With all that in place, I adjusted the seat belt lengths:
We installed and removed the seats a few times to be able to more comfortably on the panel and tunnel, but they're yet to be installed permanently (for one, I need to connect the sticks underneath them before I can close up that section).
I also got everything ready for installing the seat belts, including final-drilling all the attachment point holes, and inserting the bushings into the seat belts themselves (which the dimpler with a socket as support was a great tool for):
Seat belt ends with inserts installed
For the cabin top attach point, which uses a 5/16" bolt, the bushing would be very thin - so instead I called Crow and they sent me ends with a 5/16" hole, no bushing required (which is fine since this one doesn't rotate anyway):
Original top seat belt end (left) vs new one with a smaller hole (right)
With this, after the interior panels were in place, we permanently installed the seats and the bottom seat belts:
Forward seat and forward bottom seat belts installed in place
Rear seats and rear bottom seat belts installed in place
The top seat belts are the only part left, and will be done after the O2 tank is installed in the back, and once we get hardware for the top cabin attachment (the standard NAS517-5-9 is too short with the headliner spacer).
