I wish I would have seen this statement in the builder's manual in the chapter following the main fuselage assembly: "Dear Builder, congratulations on reaching this point, you should be very proud of your efforts! Please let this brief statement serve to warn you that everything from this point on is based on building the prototype, and in the intervening 20 years, everything has changed. We encourage you to take most of this with a grain of salt and figure it out yourself. With that, you are on your own."
Two hours without much to show--mostly measuring and planning, trying to make sure that everything fits before I started undoing some of the things I had done a few years back. When I was building the fuselage, I tended to faithfully follow the plans without much thought about the possibility of a different system or assembly requiring a completely different installation. Two examples with just the fuel pump include the installation of a stiffener on the firewall during initial construction and attaching various nut plates for covers that would never be installed. None of these are necessary as the systems supplied in Van's finish and firewall forward kits have changed.
Oh well. I did get one bracket measured and drilled to accept the pump assembly; I just now have to get nut plates to match two existing holes in the floor stiffener.
