I decided to go ahead with the top coat and to paint the cockpit dark grey. The paint was thinner and spayed quickly and easily. I did two fog coats, and then a wet coat. I’ll plan to do one final coat tomorrow to fill in areas where i missed, or went too light. It’s hard to tell what it will look like once dry, but I’m hoping it will be decent.
Tonight I applied another coat of light grey primer to the whole cockpit area. There are a few spots where access is difficult with the spray gun, so I rotated the fuselage around a few times to aid with access.
I have a darker grey finish coat that I’m planning to apply next. Painting is a lot of work, and I’m not great at it, so I’m considering just leaving it light grey and moving on. My only concern with leaving it light grey is the possible reflections on the canopy. The downside of a darker color is more heat trapped in the cockpit on hot sunny days.
I will see how I’m feeling about it tomorrow.
Tonight I spent time sorting through the various documentation that came with my Berlinger brake kit, and then installing the brake cylinders on the pedals.
Berlinger is a French company, and therefore their native measurements are all metric. That’s not a comprehension problem for me, in fact it’s my preferred method, but it does get confusing when mixing metric and imperial. The brake cylinders seem to be all metric, but the hardware supplied to install is imperial.
Berlinger supply an “installation manual” for the RV-14 kit, but it is not at the level of detail I’ve become accustomed to with Vans. Some of it was just wrong. For example, the diagram, and supplied install hardware, calls for AN3-10a bolts. At the bottom of the cylinder, those bolts are too short to provide clearance from the rudder pedal itself.
I ended up using their supplied hardware for the top of the cylinders, but used a longer AN3-12 bolt with a castle nut. The castle nut isn’t really necessary because Beringer supply a rod end bearing that does the rotating. But, in the even the bearing started binding, it is good to know the nut would not come off.
Interestingly, I discovered that the left and right rudder bars are not identical. The right cylinders needed less length that the left (or vice versa?). This must be due to the geometry once installed.
Next I’ll be working out how these lines attach via Banjo fittings. Hopefully it’s not too complicated, but it will require some more research.
I guess I didn’t really finish the rudder pedals yesterday, but tonight I did. I installed them into the rudder bars, applying some grease and torquing the castle nuts so that there’s minimal play, and also minimal friction.
Tonight I finished the rudder pedals, final-sizing the holes and riveting the parts together. I was able to squeeze all of the rivets, so assembly was easy. It’s recommended to put the shop head of a rivet on the side with the thickest material, but I didn’t like the idea of having the shop heads visible on the pedals, so I deviated from that.
Having separated the parts previously, tonight I etched and primed the rudder pedals. This was a good chance to experiment with some changes to my painting setup.
Previously I had no regulator on the air from the compressor to gun, and was using hi-flow couplers. With this setup, I was setting pressure on the tank at around 100 PSI. First I added a regulator to the gun, allowing me to see what actual pressure was passing through the gun with the trigger pulled. It was around 30 PSI, higher than the recommended 24. It was possibly even higher since the regulator is likely interfering with air pressure and flow even with the control backed out completely. With the regulator in line, I was able to set air pressure on the tank to 50 PSI, and adjust the regulator to allow 24 PSI with the trigger pulled.
With the changes made, I primed the rudder pedals. The result was an improvement, but there is still some orange peel effect showing up. It’s good enough for the rudder pedals, since no one will be looking that closely. I will try to tune the pressure and paint volume again to see if I can get a better result before I start painting the cockpit.
Tonight I cleaned the cockpit with rubbing alcohol, and rotated the fuselage upside down in preparation for paint.
I have some new paint that arrived, smoke grey color, which will be used to coat the cockpit. I want to tune up my paint system before I start on the cockpit, so I will start by painting the rudder peddles.
Tonight I finished masking up the cockpit in preparation for painting. I used dowels in the nutplates to hopefully prevent any paint from fouling up the threads.
The area will need a final clean up with alcohol before I can start spraying.
Today at lunchtime I quickly finished setting the final rivets in the baggage area, completing the chapter. Next I will be painting the cockpit, and then installing the brakes and rudder pedals.
Yesterday I was able to install the flap motor channel and flap motor brackets, and today I installed the baggage compartment side walls. Actually, I didn’t quite finish; there are some rivets I will need to buck tomorrow to wrap up. It is too late in the evening to start riveting.
The pop riveting is so fast, it’s really amazing how quickly and easily it all comes together. I wouldn’t attempt this without a pneumatic squeezer though, it would be painful to manually set these hundreds of rivets. I made extensive use of the “wedge tool”. I found it very useful to have a piece of tape on the little wedge so I could tape it into the correct orientation before setting the rivet.
