Finishing: Canopy

 

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January 13-14, 2007: (3.0 hrs.) 

Spent a lot of time on the plane but mostly trying to figure out what I wanted to get done next.  There are so many little jobs I can tackle at the moment now that I have the finishing kit and the firewall forward kits in the shop.

I decided that with the engine on order, it probably makes sense for me to focus on getting the firewall ready for the engine.  That said, I did have the canopy roll bar laying on the floor and wanted to get it mounted and out of the way.

The roll bar gave me fits.  Mainly because the measurements on the 'full scale' plans were not matching what I was measuring on my canopy deck.  The plans have you measure back from a rivet on the side skin (I think 2 5/8") [pictured].. this gives you the aft position of the roll bar.

 
The plans also have you measure back from a rivet on the top canopy rail to locate and drill these two pilot holes for mounting the roll bar.  Here is where the problem comes in... when I place the roll bar on the canopy decks and align it to the aft position (solid line on far right in the picture), it become clear that the forward pilot hole (far left in picture) when drilled out full size thru the roll bar base will not have the proper edge distance.  I pulled my hair out measuring, and re-measuring, and checking the plans.  For some reason, my top canopy deck is slightly different in dimension then shown on the plans.  It turns out that it really should be slide forward more about 3/16" (distance shown in picture).  This distance was enough to give me the proper edge distance.   I also called Van's and confirmed that the fore/aft position of the roll bar is not that critical.... So I proceeded to build on...
Clamped the roll bar in place and matched drilled it from the underneath using the pilot holes.  One other things I did was fabricate these four spacers (two per side) that fit under the canopy deck and up against the longerons.  These spacers get matched drilled with the canopy deck and provide a solid base for the roll bar stop nuts to rest on.
I decided that I wanted the roll bar mounting flange to match the angle of the canopy deck, so I pulled out the die grinder and used the cut-off wheel to take some of the flange off.
Here is one side of the roll bar mounted in place after trimming the mounting flange.
Roll bar temporarily installed.  I will remove this for painting once I complete the entire canopy.
A picture from the other side.
There a support rod that runs from the top center of the roll bar down to the front deck.  The top of the rod needed to be trimmed about 2 inches to get it to fit into the roll bar recess.  I then clamped it to the recess and drilled a 1/4 inch hole for the attachment bolt.
The bottom end of the roll bar center support gets clamped to the front deck center rib (sandwiched between the angle stiffener and rib).  The flange on the center support get matched drilled using the holes in the angle stiffener.
I trimmed the excess material off the bottom of the flange.

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