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Dave's RV-7A Builder's Log
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Date: 10-2-2016
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Number of Hours: 5.00
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Manual Reference:
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Brief Description: Covers & misc
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After getting all of the fuel covers to fit yesterday, I turned to the forward part of the tunnel where the cabin heat box, mixture cable and fuel lines are covered. The primary challenge in this area centered on the wire bundle as it makes a 90 degree bend from the floor and starts the run up the firewall. Simply put, my bundle is too big…or the cover is too restrictive…either way, I was going to have to do something to fix it.
When Van designed the RV7, I’m sure he had a simple VFR aircraft in mind…something that might have a couple of wires for lights, maybe a radio or even two...but not the ADS-B compliant, WAAS GPS, XM weather monster I have created. All of this means cables and wires, and I have them all running through the center tunnel. It all fits—barely—but getting the covers to work has been tough. The fix? Frankencover…so to speak. The first picture shows the original cover in it’s simple glory. The second shows it cut in half as I elected to fabricate a 45 degree splice to give my brake lines and wire bundle plenty of space . An additional advantage is that I could use a little more robust aluminum than the .025 that the cover was made from, thus making it stronger. As if that cover needed to be stronger…funny how we justify our decisions.
One of the most time consuming tasks was to install two nut plates on the firewall to attach the top of the cover. Without access from both sides simultaneous, I had to resort to using the dimple dies and pulled rivets to attach. The six holes and four rivets took me over an hour to complete. Once that was done, I went back to cover fabrication. Time ran out on me before I could completely finish, but the third picture shows the general idea. I’m going to need a bit of planning to be able to easily access the fuel line fitting, but that should be a fairly simple issue to solve.
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Perfectly good cover...
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...cut in two
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Coming together...slowly
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