Stjohn's RV-7

1 hours.
I put the nutplates on the fuel select bracket and cover box. I totally brain-farted too. I forgot how you’re supposed to handle nutplates on thin-skinned material. I made doublers for the flanges on the cover box, countersunk those, then dimpled the holes in the cover box and used flush rivets. it works just fine, but I have to go over the handbook and find out if it’s cool to put nutplates directly on the backside of dimpled holes. I’m pretty sure it is, but I want to know, not guess.

4 hours.
made the reinforcing angles and spacers for the fuel-tank support brackets. That’s kind of a weird design, seems like a bit of a hack, but I guess it works. It’s probably a lot easier to do on the slow-build version, since the skins aren’t riveted on when you’re supposed to make these things. As it was, I had to stop because my #12 (3/16) countersink bit has joined the ranks of missing items, and I couldn’t do the bottom holes for the AN screws, so I’ll be getting back on that when my MSC order comes in. Also did the cable bearings on the baggage bulkhead wall, and finally, riveted the aft seat floors down. I’ll probably kick myself for that later, but I think I can make all the wiring runs to the tail with the openings provided in the center tunnels.
next is the cabin fuel line covers and fuel valve bracket. The plans say to slice off the front of the fuel valve bracket if you have electric trim, but I might leave it on there in case I need to mount something there. A clock, or a wet compass, maybe.
No pics, nothing terribly interesting this time.

1 hours.
Tired of bad brake puns yet? Me too, so I’m glad I’m done with these for a while. Brake pedals are drilled to the master cylinders and everything is bolted up. It’s now at the point in the manual where it says “remove and store assembly.

Pedals and cylinders, in and assembled.

Closeup of the master cylinders on the Left side. I”ll probably paint the pedals, but it’ll just come off, so I’m wondering if that’s not a waste of time.

7 hours.
This is kind of a double entry, from today and yesterday. In this episode, I fitted and drilled the plastic bearing blocks for the pedals, drilled the pedal mount points out to proper diameter, and fit the center bearing support. Then, in Act II, I made the brake pedals. Like so:

Here’s everything clecoed into place. Bearing blocks are not yet drilled to the longerons, that was done right after this photo. That was definitely a “Please, [insert deity of preference], don’t let me f**k this up” moment, because the metal they bolt onto runs the length of the plane and replacing would suck. A lot. It actually went OK. I haven’t drilled the extra holes for adjusting the positioning of the pedals. I’ve came to these measurements by sitting in the ship with a cold Tecate, simulating the optimum pedal location. I just need to find a CFI roughly the same size as me, which is pretty normal.

Detail of the bearing block and the pedal clecoed to the bolt hole on the weldment.

Pedal clecoed together, countersunk and roughed up. I’m going to paint them later, so I figured I’d just rivet them together now.

3 of 4 pedals ready for riveting

Here’s where I messed up and put the weldments in with the wrong pedal forward.

4 riveted brake pedals ready to go. The misconfigured weldments has since been fixed.

3 hours.
Wow. What a crapfight. Finally got WD409 drilled to F-711 as well as keeper-riveted to F-712. For those of you not following along on your plans, that’s the tailwheel spring mount and the two aftmost bulkheads. Since the QB kit already has the two bulkheads riveted in, you get to take out the aft-most bulkhead, f-712 and work your magic from there. That’s what I did last time, and it suuuuuucked. But it’s all back together now, except for the 4 rivets on each side that I just plain can’t get to. I ordered some cherrymax rivets to go in there, but surprise! My el-cheapo pop rivet gun from 1994 or so can’t close on the cherrymax stems, so I’ll be hittin tha’ Spruce again for a proper blind rivet gun.