Football and a nap

It was a lazy Sunday, not much progress on the Cub.  I attempted to lace the front seat, installed the windshield and marked it for final trimming and drilling, installed all the screws it the boot cowling ( I will need to get help to tighten these). I also fitted the little triangular side window, worked on the routing of the pitot lines, mag wires and cabin heat control. I am seeing an order to Aircraft Spruce in my near future ! Hopefully I can get the old engine hung next week and start fitting up everything forward of the firewall. Here are a few shots,

Should have at least two good warm days this week, hope to get the windows finished.

Boot cowl progress

Got a little work done yesterday, here are a few shots while I wait for it to warm up a little before starting to work today. I rebuilt this mixer bellcrank that is just behind the rear seat. Lubricated and replaced bolts as necessary.

I then installed the seats, still need to add the foam padding that goes on the steel tube frame of the front seat, I'll probably need to go by the bike store for this, they had foam insulation at the Lowes but it was split on one side. I think bicycle grip stuff would work better. Yes I know the seats do not match, maybe Santa will bring her some new seats ! It will fly the same either way.

After this I tackled the boot cowling, I'm not going to jinx myself and say this is on for good. So this will hopefully be an extended trial fitting.  Here are a few shots, I'm still assembling everything loose and then will have to get help to tighten everything up. Here are a few shots.

 

 Sure does not look like a full days work, but it was. Pretty cold today, high only 45 F . I may find a sunny spot and watch football, eat and nap like my retirement role model BC.

Brakes completed

I have been putting the finishing touches on the boot cowling . It is so hard to work up under the fuel tank , I want to finish as much as practical before final installation of the cowl. I have installed all the fittings on the gascolator and found a grommet that seals the hole in the firewall pretty well.

I had initially wanted to use a hard line from the tank valve to the gascolator inlet, but it did not work out. Where the line runs is right by the passengers feet and I was afraid it would get accidentally kicked and damaged. I settled on a short flex hose, which I thought would be more damage tolerant . The down side is it is a lot heavier.  The line will run from this 90 degree fitting,

Down to this 45 degree fitting that goes through the firewall.

I also plumbed the fuel drain line with the fuel resistant urethane hose I bought. This should work really slick and keep the EPA happy. I will final trim the hose after the boot cowl is installed.

Here is a shot of the exit position on the aft right boot cowling.

This shot shows the final filler neck grommet position and the installation of the filler cap. All this came out really nice and should help keep the fuel fumes out of the cockpit. I may have to put a little black RTV around here for a complete seal.

Today I worked on the final routing of the engine controls, fluids and indicating systems. Some of these must be installed concurrent with the boot installation. While I was looking for fitting today I stumbled across my brake bleeding tools so I tackled that project this afternoon. First thing was to make a bleeder fitting so 5606 did not get all over the inside. I'm not sure why, but Scott used a 1/8 27 pipe thread on the outlet fitting and a 3/8 24 straight thread on the filler fitting. Since this cap will fit on either way , it must be really easy for a hack to mess up these threads. To make a bleeder fitting I took a standard aluminum pipe fitting and force threaded it 3/8 24. It worked pretty good.

Using my Harbor Freight one man bleeding tool, I initially tried to suck the fluid up from the top. While this did work , I could not get good firm pedal. I ended up pressure bleeding from the bottom, this worked much better and the pedals only move about a 1/4 inch before brake application. I really need this tight pedal because of the angle my massive feet make on the rudder/brake pedals. This shot shows the setup, the hose on the left terminates with a Milton fitting that plugs into the air hose. With the air pressure at about 5 psi this worked great.

This shot shows the fitting installed to catch the fluid in the cockpit.

So far everything works great and no sign of any leaks. I almost forgot to mention that the reworked bungee covers arrived from Airtex. After my complaints, they took the time to rework the design and the result is a well made and excellent fitting cover. It took two months but the result was worth the wait.

This completes the landing gear.

Even more painting

The weather man says this will be the last 70 degree day for awhile, so I spent the day painting. Got started about 9:30 and did a little finish wet sanding on the right gear leg so it could dry before painting. Then using the fine brush I bought yesterday, I painted the black touch up spots on the cockpit interior. It really does not look too bad considering it was done with a brush.

The flash makes the floor boards look worse than they are.  You can see where I touched up the paint on the front seat frame. I case your wondering , you cannot remove this after the fuselage is covered.

With all that completed , I taped off the right side to paint the gear leg. I wanted to paint outside but the only way it is 70 degrees in Nov. in VA is for the wind to really blow out of the Southwest. The Aerothane dries so slow (even slower when the humidity is high) that I had to paint inside. Here it is all ready to paint, I did the fan in the door thing again.

After lunch I shot two coats of Aerothane Insignia White, it came out better than I thought it would. I got one little run down near the brake line, it was really hard to shoot down at the bottom near the wheel. It probably could have used one more coat, but I did not have enough paint mixed.

With the remaining paint I shot the windshield strip and the last belly inspection panel.

The last items I wanted to paint was the flat black on the boot cowl glare shield, instrument panel and windshield trim strip. I was starting to run outa steam but I got it done about 6:30.

  This came out pretty good for a spray can. I could not find flat black paint in a Qt. can? I should be able to spend the next few work days actually assembling parts. Check back tomorrow, you might see some real progress.

Check out the floor jack at the upper right, my friend Scott wanted me to take it to the dump for him. It is really cool. I would bet big money that it was even made in America, remember when we use to make things?

More painting

As I mentioned before , I was not happy with the way the red tape lines turned out on the lower door.

With the forecast for upper 60's today, I decided to repaint the Polytone white and fix the spots where the red bled under the fine line tape. With the red well cured , I applied the fine line tape to the red areas, there was a perfect sealing ridge between the red and the white. I shot one cross coat of Insignia White and it came out great. The Polytone dries much faster than the Aerothane , so it did not really have time to bleed under.

This finishes the lower door, it came out really nice.

While I was waiting for this to dry, I prepared some parts for primer that I need to finish the windshield installation. I got the two windshield strips, one belly panel, two elevator links and the gascolator clamp ready for paint. When I mixed the primer , I used a small fine brush and primed the spots on the fuselage frame that I sanded and treated on Saturday. I then shot two coats on the other parts. Here they are ready for paint.
Same set up as before in the door with the box fan blowing out.

This was it for today, with it getting dark(and cold) at 5, it really cuts down the progress. Tomorrow is supposed to be another warm day and I hope to paint the gear leg and windshield strips white, the fuselage spots black, and the dash and aft panel flat black. If I get all this completed it will be ready for final assembly.
Here's a shot of my helper, he's worn out.

Minor disaster

Not much progress to report on Saturday, I actually took a small step backwards. I had planned not to mess with the landing gear vee's because these would be easy winter recover project. They always seem to crack  long before the rest of the plane because of the slipstream beating on them constantly.  However my buddy came by and convinced me that it would be an easy rub out and repaint. Well , he was WRONG. Seems someone repainted these with a spray can , the more I rubbed on the cracks the worse it got. I finally got it repaired and sanded out and ready for repaint. I will have to shoot this with aerothane, because of the mixed process. Since this will not really look much better than before, I chalk this up as wasted time. Here it is ready to paint.

I also worked on the interior some today. When the Coastal boys let her sit outside all the exposed steel got some surface rust. Nothing serious , just everywhere the paint was worn off. Like this,

I sanded down the best I could all these spots. It will be ready to paint tomorrow when it's supposed to be 70 F. I also attempted to scrub off all that white over spray on the floorboards. The last guy that painted the left sidewall did not take the time to mask off before he painted(like I did). What a mess. I managed to get this looking acceptable. That killed the time allotted to the cub on Saturday. Probably take tomorrow off.
 Since BC is more popular than the Cub , here he is.

Shanghaied

When out to the airport today to drop off some parts and got shanghaied by a friend with mag problems. We got it  figured out but it was 3:30 PM when I got home. Just could not get started on the Cub that late. Plan to do some more painting tomorrow.

Success and failure

I did not get a chance to post last night because I worked until 11:30 and wanted to get an early start today. The goal was to paint the red on the door and the boot cowling. I had committed  to the original design with the square when my buddy came by to introduce doubt into the proceedings. With the stripes as wide as they are and the short space on the boot cowl to terminate them, this seems to be the best option. In addition this should be fairly easy to tape off. When I started to tape, I found that there is a 1 1/2 inch difference between the width of the stripes. The left side is 13 1/2 inches wide and the right side is 12 inches. The question is, do I make the squares a different size or do I make the squares the same like before. Since you can not see both sides at one time, I decided to make the square fit the stripe. The taping was fairly straight forward however time consuming. I used 1/4 inch fine line tape then filled in with 1 1/2 Frog tape. Here they are.

  I set up for painting just like before right inside the garage door. Taping the door stripes and the boot cowl squares last night took almost 4 hours. I spent 3 hours this morning taping off the areas that don't get painted and getting everything set up.

 The temperature was right at the minimum for shooting the Aerothane at 60 F. I applied the three coats as per the instructions. I mixed 6 oz of paint and thinned it 40%. I had just enough paint.

I waited 2 hours and then carefully removed the masking. Disappointment would be an understatement ! I'm not sure if it was the cold temp on the tape or the extra thinner in the paint. Every place the fine line tape lapped over I had paint bleed through. I had taken extra care to go over this tape just before painting.

  I also got some minor bleed on the door.

There was really not much I could do about this until the paint went completely tack free. It's hard to walk away but had to be done. After dinner I went out and fixed this. With the red tack free but not solvent resistant , I laid my stainless 6 inch rule over the red and used a Q tip dipped in 2210 cleaner to remove the bleed through. It came out even better than I expected. Here is an after shot.

 Sadly the Polytone white finish on the door is not resistant to the 2210 cleaner like the white Aerothane on the boot cowling. The only way to make this perfect will be to repaint the white using the red tape lines as a dam to block the paint from bleeding under. I will probably do this after the red has had a chance to cure. It's really not bad but it's right where you will see it every time you get in. Here is a shot with the door installed overall it came out good.

  Supposed to be colder tomorrow, not really sure what I will work on next. I need to touch up some black paint inside the cockpit,  then I can install the boot cowling for good. That will be a milestone ! My helper has been tailunder this week(he doesn't feel good). He wants to say hi to his Mom.