An area that we've been considering for a while is the where the canopy meets the roll bar on the outboard edges and the the skin overlap. After seeing the way that Ken did his, we has decided to copy him. So, Dad started attacking the rear skin, a stress relief hole,
Snips up to the point along the 'vertical'.
Then a 90 degree bend of the tab.
Smoothing and tweaking.
And finally some trimming.
Obviously this took a little longer than the above photos might imply - lots of measuring to get a 1/16" ish gap between the roll-bar brackets and the folded material which will be filled with Pro-Seal and careful alingment in general. Looks like it should work well - time will tell.
I continued with the cowl and inlets. First up I back drilled the doubler / mounting plates to the lower cowl faces.
The mistake was drilling from aft towards the front - the glass ply lifted from the AL sheet and created voids. I sanded down a line below the problems back to the AL and removed the fibreglass layup in this area. I'll refill / remake later when I'm doing the inlets. IF you drill from the front aft wards it isn't a problem - lesson learnt.
One side benefit of no glass was I could dimple the AL joins.
Then it was more shaping to match the 4 3/8" hole previously made.
Also trimmed some of the excess of original cowl material to make access a little easier, the remaining 'lip' will be used to glass onto when I do the rear side with the inlets.
The Shell delivery arrived this afternoon - all in all good service and means we have the right grease and brake fluid available for when we need it.
The afternoon was spent out doing various bits, including visiting Sam in Queenstown to look at the 7A he is building. Going well, nice job and as always things to pickup on and learn from.
