The plan for today was initially to finish the rear spar reinforcement cap by installing all of the rivets. Unfortunately, when Craig got here and we tried to get started, we discovered that the CherryMax rivet puller was broken. When we connected it to air it didn’t operate and air continuously leaked out the exhaust. Our suspicion is that the o-rings in the air cylinder have gone bad since there was a slight air leak before that could have been caused by them starting to go. It would be possible to pull the rivets by hand but the pneumatic puller does a much better job and makes it much easier so we decided to wait until it is repaired.

Rudder Pedals

Since we had to wait for the pneumatic puller to be repaired, I decided to finish assembling the rudder pedals with the replacement part I got from CubCrafters. This went smoothly including the application of the rest of the grip tape so step 1 of section 4¹ of the fuselage manual is officially done.

Fuselage Touch-Up

I also completed section 1² of the fuselage manual today by touching up all of the spots on the fuselage where the powder coat was marked or worn through using some satin black enamel paint. I had originally used matte black for the first couple spots I had touched-up in the past but the satin is a much better match.

Fuel Selector

The last thing I did on the fuselage today was complete section 4 part 6³ by pre-assembling the fuel selector and installing it temporarily in the fuselage.

Installed fuel selector

Deburring Rivet Holes

Finally, even though we couldn’t pull the rivets for the rear reinforcement cap, I deburred all of the holes including those with the clecos. This should save us a lot of time and hopefully make pulling the rivets a quick job once the puller is operational again.