Installing the windshield

After curing, the door windows were complete:

All windows installed in place

We started the windshield installation by carefully determining the centerline of the airplane, and matching that to the center of the windshield:

Using the laser to find the center of the fuselage, to align the windshield

That is, until we realized the center of the windshield is BS and totally irrelevant given the irregular shape :) and instead we simply adjusted it to a position that seemed to make more sense and look good, trimming the edges as we went until we got a gap of less than 3/32" all around the cabin cover flange. We then marked it and trimmed down to get the actual consistent 3/32" gap, using arbitrary markings to realign:

Alignment markings on the windshield and fuselage

Trimming the windshield with a sanding disk

We sanded the cabin cover flange until the fiber was exposed (same as for the windows), and did some more minor adjustment of the flange and windshield edges to keep a consistent 3/32" gap:

Fuselage taped up for sanding the windshield flange

We then taped up the windshield - the top following the Silpruf process, and the bottom following EAA's process:

Windshield with external tapes applied to it

Windshield with interior tapes applies to it

Fully-trimmed windshield held in place by clecos and clamps

With the window ready to attach, I also fabricated and attached the 5 clips that are supposed to hold it in place:

Metal clips for holding the windshield

Windshield held in place by metal clips

We then followed the same process as the windows' for the top edge of the windshield, applying Silpruf, installing spacers, waiting for 12h, then trimming the spacers and gluing it in:

Windshield with a first layer of Silpruf applied to the top edge

Windshield attached to the top flange with Silpruf

We had tried to keep the cleco holes relatively shallow to reduce the change of hitting the conduit behind them, and that worked fine initially but during that final attachment some clecos just didn't take - cleaning off the Silpruf around them and from the clecos themselves helped (I guess the Silpruf was acting as a lubricant and making the clecos slide out?), but we also added some clamps to lower the pressure against the clecos.

We also already marked the edges of the fiberglass fairing, which is what we'll tackle next:

Bottom windshield fairing space taped up for fiberglass layup

Time lapse:


Total cabin door and transparency rivets: 142
Total cabin door and transparency time: 257.9h

No comments:

Post a Comment