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| Ok, lets start with the last picture first this time. This is what the plane looks like after a week of work. See the next few pics for the details. |
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| This is the windshield just before I glued it to the fuselage. |
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| And here it is after the glue is applied and everything is clamped down. |
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| While I wait for the glue to set up on the windshield I decided to fit the tail strobe on the lower rudder fairing. |
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| Pulled the plane out into the sun on this nice hot day so the sun can bake the windshield a little. I had to "bend" the sides of the plexi to fit the frame and adding a little heat will make it form better. |
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| Front view of the airplane Sunday evening. |
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| Finally got around to drilling the axel and installing the cotter pins that prevent the wheel nuts from coming off. |
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| Installed the brake lines to the brake calipers. Now its time to fill and bleed the brakes. |
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| Started working on the cowling. |
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| Ran into a bit of a problem. The exhaust system I purchased was designed with the stock Van's cowling. Since I am using a James cowling with a slightly different profile the right side exhaust pipe comes into contact with the cowling. I sent an email to Clint who runs Vetterman Exhaust now and he had me send the right side back so he can reconfigure it a bit to give me some clearance. |
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| What the heck is this?!? Its a tool I created that allows me to accurately trim the firewall side of my cowling. It works by sliding the hooked end under the cowling and hooking it on the forward edge of the fuselage. Then I can use a sharpie to mark the top of the cowling using the flap of the tool on top which I set to be even with the fuselage (minus a little for the sharpie thickness). It worked out very well on the lower cowl. Upper cowl has some angles in it so we will see how it works on that. |
