Weeks 57-60: Center Fuselage

One of the remaining steps from the rear fuselage was the rudder cable assembly. Once I had all the parts prepped I did the final assembly and attached the cables. I did find that the suggested washers allowed the springs to come loose from where they bolt into the frame. I fixed this by adding some additional larger washers.

I ran into another issue with a missing part. I could not find the luggage area floor, and checking the packing list I did not check it off when unpacking the fuselage crate. At the time I assumed that some of the parts were just bundled in the bags with the others, but after seeing the size of this one there is no way it would not have been loose on its own.

I requested the replacement part, but also decided I needed to go back through the packing list to look for other issues. I found several more that I could not account for, mostly individual parts that seem like they should have been packaged with similar ones from the same subassembly. The factory immediately agreed to add these to the next air-fright so I should have them in 6-8 weeks.

I decided to do as much as I could with the luggage area before moving on to the center fuselage section. I added the insulation to the luggage compartment bulkhead using a template I cutout. I think this will work well to fit the insulation on all the parts it is needed on. I also assembled the luggage extension and cleco'ed it in place on the bulkhead. I did notice there are gaps in the corners. To help with thermal and sound insulation I plan to seal those up before closing the rear fuselage.

I started the center fuselage by prepping the under-seat floor ribs and test fitting them on the carry-through spar as well as the rear spar and gear box that had to be assembled. I then did a test fit of the floor section and put it together with the other parts. This gave me a good plan of how to do the final assembly.

I am going to insulate and rivet the floor assembly first, then add the spar and other parts on top of it. I think this will be easier than trying to move the fully assembled main spar, gear box and rear spar joined together just by the ribs. Then I will join that section to the rear fuselage.

I did run into what I thought was a big problem during the test fit. The main spar was not lining up with the holes in the floor and seemed like it would not be wide enough to fit the wing spar where they join together. This caused some panic before I realized that the bottom of the main spar is flexible enough to line up correctly.

While working getting the floor prepped for final assembly I made a subassembly of the gear box and the ribs that attach to it. I will use this a staring point and attach the main spar and rear spar when assembling them on the floor. To make sure I wouldn't have an issue later on I did a test fit of the main gear assembly. I determined there was plenty of room for the formed rivets attaching the ribs to go into the gear box without interfering. The flush rivets that attach the powder coated brackets do need to be installed from the inside of the assembly.

I did get the correct bracket I needed for the step support assembly, so I installed that and completed the rivets on the lower skin. That area is now just waiting on the luggage floor.