Finished up the F-741 tunnel cover assembly, and finished installing the nutplates on the FWD seat floors and the control rod tunnel.
| Bending the end of F-741B. Initially, I bent this using the vise, but my vise has pieces of aluminum in the jaws (to protect aluminum), and it is hard to get an accurate bend. The mini-bender works better, I just have to dig it out from under a bunch of junk to use it. |
| The holes in F-741 have to be located based upon measurements, because there is no way to back-drill the holes. I located the holes by holding the part next to the holes and marking each F-741B. Here, I have already drilled the front holes, and I want to make sure the back holes are marked right. Looks close enough. Note, we need to have the nutplates installed in the seat floors in order to get everything to line up right. |
| Looks like it fits. Need to open-up the holes to 3/16" and put the screws in, then, we need to drill the top piece. |
| F-741B, marked and pre-drilled. |
| Tunnel cover assembly is done. I screwed this up a bit, but managed to fix it--I won't say how. Ok, after drilling and screwing the supports on, the top piece did not line-up with the back sides of both F-741B supports. I went ahead and drilled the top piece to both supports. Then, I had to cut a little off of one of the supports so they matched at the end of the top piece. When I was done, everything looked like it was supposed to. No one will ever know. |
| Now, we get to finish installing all of those nutplates in the tunnel. |
| And, let's not forget the nutplate on the hole in the FWD right seat floor that we just drilled for the tunnel cover. |
| Tunnel cover done, nutplates installed. These are a pain in the butt, because the nutplates cannot be reached without standing on a step. This puts you in a position where you are leaning with all of your weight against the side of the fuselage. After a few minutes, this tends to hurt. My chest hurt for a week after I installed the baggage floor access covers. Perhaps I should look into building a fuselage rotisserie. |
| Oops, forgot those nutplates next to the stick cutouts. Now we are done. |