Starting the doors and FWF

Last weekend, Kelly and I started two major tasks: doors and firewall forward (FWF).

The doors on the RV-10 are notoriously difficult and frustrating to get right.  You have to fit them just right on the cabin top, which involves a lot of sanding, fitting, sanding, fitting, sanding, filling, sanding, more sanding, etc.

Each door comes in two parts, an inside and an outside.  The first step is to rough trim each part.  Then, you mix up some epoxy and thickener and spread it between the two sides, then cleco and clamp it to the fuselage while it cures.  This ensures the curves of the door at least approximately match those of the fuselage.

After that, you cut the edges to fit in the door frame, then start sanding to get things to fit just right.  It’s not perfect yet, but it’s close enough to mount the hinges to the doors the next time I work on it.

I also started working on the door handles and latches (not pictured).

While I was doing this, Kelly started on the firewall forward section.  This is basically everything that goes in front of the firewall: engine mount, fuel and oil systems, engine, etc.  The first steps involve mounting a few of the accessories to the firewall.  Kelly mounted the fuel and oil pressure sensors (top center in picture below), oil cooler (lower right), and brake fluid reservoir (not pictured).  We’d previously installed the heater boxes (left in the picture), which control the amount of heat in the cabin.

Next up: more sanding!  Kelly has started working on the hinges that attach the cowl to the fuselage.