Fuselage

Today I set up a simple little jig to hang the rudder pedals from, so I could mount and drill the master cylinders to the brake pedals. Basically, I just clamped a couple of 2 x 4's to my workbench to hang the assembly from. I didn't take a bunch of pictures, but I basically followed my friend Mike Bullock's method that he describes here. Once I had the holes drilled, I installed all the hardware, bolting it all together. All that's left is to insert the cotter pins in the castle nuts. But I'm not going to do that now. I'm not sure if there may be some need to take this apart for some reason before final installation. Plus, this is the first time in the project that I've run into cotter pins and castle nuts. I don't know how much to torque down the nuts on the bolts before inserting the pins. I need to look that up or get some advice. For now, this is going back on the shelf until final installation.

Here's a shot of them, all finished! I'm very happy with the results.

UPDATE: After a lot of careful reading, research, and consideration, I decided to install long bolts to hold the brake pedals on, rather than the two short bolts included in the kit. See more and see all the reasons for it and more photos on my page from August 10, 2009.

The next step is to install and drill the bottom forward floor stiffeners. To do that, the skin needs to be put back on. So I clecoed it back in place and decided that now is a good time to drill the skin to the fuselage. I read forward in the plans, and there is never any mention of drilling the skin, but this is the logical time to do it, so I went ahead.

It looks good to see this back together, all drilled in place. It involved drilling the double row of holes through the F-704 bulkhead, the double row on the forward end through the firewall, and both sides through the side skins and lower longerons.

Here's how it looks on the inside. All the holes through the lower longeron and the steel brackets look great.

I also enlarged these holes to 7/16" for the fuel vent lines.

And this one hole, the forward-most center hole, is enlarged to #12 on the RV-7A model. I'm doing it now so I don't forget and end up dimpling it.

Now, I'm ready for those floor stiffeners! I'm almost at the point of disassembly. It's very exciting to think I'm nearly at that point in the project.

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