Finishing Left Wing Nutplates and Aileron Cable Fairleads - 6.4 hours

I had a full weekend day to work so I was able to accomplish a lot today - although it was a bit scattered. To start, I finished the rear 2 fuel tank nutplates to officially finish section 57¹ of the manual. After that, I sanded the first rib slightly so that the aileron cable fairlead would fit (on both wings) and installed it. I then proceeded to install the rest of the fairleads per section 60². This was a huge pain and, despite tips from online builder forums and Craig, still involved quite a bit of frustration. The problem, essentially, is that you must hold the fairlead in position while also spreading the circlip (retaining ring) to fit over it. Unlike most spring clips/retaining rings though, this one doesn’t have any holes on the end with which to grab it. Instead, you have to use regular pliers. Craig found some “inverse” pliers with the teeth on the outside that spread open as you squeeze them and are made for this job. I then had to place one end of the circlip in the fairlead channel meant to hold the clip and press out on the other end with the pliers (with the other end of the pliers on the inside of the fairlead). This required some luck/finesse to prevent the clips from popping off and going flying (which happened a fair number of times). The technique that seemed to work the best was holding the first end of the circlip in place with my thumb and pushing out on the other side of the clip directly across from the first end (that was already seated). This seemed to keep the first end seated a little better although was hard to pull off. Also, since the pliers weren’t spreading the end of the clip directly, it took quite a bit of force to open it enough to get it into place. Finally, to complicate this further, the pliers were a bit in the way of getting the circlip in place and it worked the best to get the far end in next and then finesse the rest into place. This was a tricky balancing act and, although I eventually got all of them done for this wing, really wasn’t fun.

The rest of what I did today was much more of a mixed bag. I clamped the #13 rib in place and marked the drilling position along the spars per section 52³ but think I’d like to get a bit more verification before I drill them. I also marked the spar/machined rib for trimming per section 54⁴ and the stall warning cutout per section 59⁵. There is more work to do for each of these sections but it was at least a start. I should also mention that my engine shipped recently along with the firewall forward kit! It hasn’t arrived yet although some back ordered parts did the other day via UPS. I compared the packing slips for these parts to the packing slips and, after confirming everything was there, moved the box to the shed.

Finally, I installed the pitot and AoA lines per sections 43⁶ and 44⁷ of the manual and used silicone to secure them in place. This is similar to what was done for the landing light and other wires except for the fact that they go in the spar channel on the aft side of the leading edge. The manual was slightly wrong here as it specified to install the air data computer in the wing and plumb the pitot tube to it. I’m not sure why the manual specifies to do it that way but I confirmed with a number of sources that the lines should run to the wing root. With those in place, I’m now ready to install the fuel tank in the left wing (after the silicone sets).