1-22-2012 – 4.9 Hours

The session started with mounting the roll bar. It’s a bit putty trying to bolt the roll bar in but it is possible with a little tweaking. The roll bar is supposed to be perpendicular to the fuselage and as the picture shows, mine is pretty close.

Next I trimmed the roll bar support to length. I ended up cutting a bit over an inch off of the support bar, then drilled the #12 hole for the 3-5A bolt that holds the support to the roll bar. I also drilled the support to the rib in front and bolted it on. After this I cut the roller tracts to length, clamped them in place, and studied the geometry of the frame in relationship to the fuselage. In short, the sides and back are very close. The front curve is a bit high. I’m guessing it’s about 9/16″ of an inch high. It is also not parallel to the roll bar. Cutting about 3/8″ off the bottom of the from frame tube appears as if it will take care of all of the parallel issues and most (if not all) of the height issue. I want to talk to Van’s before I cut the frame – I suspect cutting it incorrectly could be an expensive mistake.

I’ve got a few ideas about how to drill the HDPE blocks in the back. Mostly I am thinking of doing test runs with wooden blocks until I get it right and then I’ll work a jig up in the drill press to duplicate the correct cut.