I installed the roll bar and center brace simultaneously with riveting the top skin – the assembly sequence sort of forces you to combine these two things – but I'll detail the installation here separately for posterity.
You'll notice that the roll bar components are black now; I had them powder coated at the same time I was having the instrument panel done. I think it looks sharp and should be low-glare.
Somewhere during this process I installed the defrost fans for good, using a set of cheap plastic grilles sourced from Amazon to dress them up a bit:
I finagled the fasteners and spacers into place, and torqued all the bolts. (I'll explain these little map lights in a subsequent post)
Because I want the cockpit interior to be as "automotive" as possible, I am trying to avoid ugly exposed bolts and nuts. To disguise the roll bar mounting hardware, I simply covered the bolt heads with black snap-on bolt caps. These are purely cosmetic, but I think they do a nice job of making this area look more attractive.
I used more of these caps to hide the hardware that attaches the center brace. I think these are used by motorcycle owners to dress up their bikes – anyway, they work for RV-7 cockpits too.
