Fuselage

Today I continued my work on the wing root fairing for the right wing. When it was finished, I fabricated the short piece of vent line that connects the vent line inside the fuselage to the vent line fitting on the fuel tank.

First, I took the wing root fairing off and trimmed the inside edge all along the mark I made the other night for the small gap called for in the plans. Then I clecoed it back on and measured carefully to make sure the gap was 3/16" to 1/4" all along the side of the fuselage. After the usual deburring, scuffing, cleaning, dimpling, and priming, here's the finished fairing for the right wing:

Except for final topcoat paint, it's finished. It will now go back on the shelf until final assembly. One problem I didn't expect to encounter was interference with the washer underneath the vent line fitting. As seen below, it's large enough that the rubber seal will run into this during final assembly. It actually sticks out from under the wing root fairing. So what's wrong here?

I went back and studied the drawings and the plans, and there's no doubt whatsoever that two washers are called for in this application. When I was working on this part back a number of months ago, it just made sense to me to put one washer on the inside of the skin and one on the outside. Are both of them supposed to go on the inside? That would seem weird to me. I'm going to have to do some checking and find out. A close review of the drawings still didn't give me an answer. You can see how it sticks out in the picture below. There's no way the rubber seal will go around the leading edge without interference here.

Well, after putting the question to my friends on the forums, I removed this washer and relocated it to the inside where the other one is, and reinstalled the vent line fitting. This issue isn't settled yet, however. I may trim the forward edge of the washer down to size and put it back here. I wrote an email to Vans and asked them about it, too. So I'll wait and see what they say. Anyway, for now, I went ahead and finished the vent line installation as seen below with the washer on the inside. It will only result in some minor tweaking to get the vent lines to fit either way.

This short little vent tube will also go back on the shelf until final installation. This pretty much finishes up everything I can do for now on the forward part of the wing installation. The fuel line will be finished after this wing is pulled off. Next, I'll go to the back end and tackle the flap fitting, and the flap pushrod installation.

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