With the help of my lovely assistant, I was able to get the oil cooler mount riveted to the firewall, and the engine mount bolted
Initial switch pod sanding
As it sat after being glassed in place, the switch pod was pretty rough. I did an initial rough sanding with some 50 and 80
Cowl hinges
As I mentioned before, the fiberglass cowl is going to be held onto the plane with aluminum piano hinges. Tonight, I riveted these in place.
Pod Glassing
I started by riveting in place some nutplates for the pod switch panel. Then I re-taped off the interface line between what will be clear-coated
Pod trimming
Tonight, the flange I had glassed in had cured, so I trimmed that up. Then, since I’ll be installing the pod permanently soon, I bolted
Trim and flange the pod
Overnight, the switch pod had fully cured (thanks to some heat lamps, this Minnesota winter doesn’t want to go away!) I popped the pod off
Glassing the pod
Pretty quick night, but an important one! I first covered the foam pod form and the area of the cabin top around it with packaging
Final shaping the pod
Tonight was spent doing some final tweaking to the shape of the switch pod. Once I had that done, I cut an aluminum panel that
Overhead switch pod
I’ve decided that I am going to go forward with the overhead switch pod that I’ve been putzing with. However, the foam plug I had
Engine mount match drilled
This afternoon, we got the engine mount match drilled to the weldment brackets behind the firewall. This is a two person job, so I employed