Weeks 53-56: Rear Fuselage

Since the last update I have made quite a bit of progress on the rear fuselage. I continued to prep as much as I could while waiting for the replacement rib corner part. While doing that I found another part issue. I got two of one of the brackets for the step support assembly that are for the right side instead of one left and one right.

I requested the replacement for this as well, but fortunately I think I can continue building around it for now. Since these parts are mirror images I just temporarily put it in backwards, but with the flange angle adjusted to match the rib it attaches to. I am waiting to rivet the skin around this part so that I can have a little more flexibility to move it out of the way if needed.

I started test fitting the skins at the rear end of the fuselage. There is a small skin that sits underneath the outside ones that comes completely flat, so the first step was fitting that with cleco's to get the shape right. Then I removed it so it could be primed. With that done and the rear outer skins primed I fit them both back up on the rib assembly. Getting everything to fit correctly was a bit of a challenge, but following the recommended instructions of starting at the top of the rear rib assembly and working down worked pretty well. I was a little unsure of what the order of the two rear skins should be since they overlap on the bottom at the center. I decided to put on the one that fit over the tie-down bracket first, and that seemed to work pretty well.

I then test fit the forward skins and discovered a couple issues that needed to be fixed. There was one rivet on the left side that was almost covered by the forward skin. After checking with the factory I filed a small round notch in the forward skin to allow room for the rivet head. Similarly, both forward skins almost completely covered one of the rivet holes at the bottom rear corner. The fix for this was to cut a notch in the corner of the skin (making sure to still allow plenty of overlap in the actual skins) to allow the rivet head to clear.

With the necessary modifications done, I primed the mating surfaces of all the skins to be ready for final assembly. Shortly after I finished this process I got the missing rib piece so I was able to finish assembling rib 3 and rivet them all to the bottom skin. Then I riveted in all the step support parts, except for the one that needs to be replaced.

The next step was to finally rivet on the skins. I started with the sides of the rear skins, again starting at the top of the rib assembly where it was the sturdiest. I did have a few places where I had to ream out the holes to get the rivets installed, but for the most part they were aligned well. Then I moved to the sides of the forward skins before turning the whole assembly on its side to rivet the bottom part.

After getting the skins riveted I started on some of the rear fuselage detail work like putting in the rudder cables, the wire harness and starting to fit some of the interior bulkheads. The rear luggage compartment bulkhead had some holes that needed to be match drilled and a notch added to match the ribs, but those were very straightforward. There were also a few rivets in the rib 3 assembly that need to be drilled out before the bulkhead can be attached. This was not indicated in the instructions, but I think it should have been.

I still have to figure out my exact antenna placement, but I think will need some additional wires that were not part of the harness I got from Midwest Panel for at least the top comm antenna and the ELT. I will get that figured out before putting on the top skins.

I have a few more tasks that I can do now on the rear fuselage, then I will start working on the center part. Its exciting seeing the pile of parts start to turn into something that looks like an airplane!