Matt's RV-7 Project

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.

The plans are silent on when to do the final installation of the top front skin (F-7106), but having run out of things to do in the upper-forward fuselage, I figured it was time to finally rivet it on for good. After triple-checking all the wiring and plumbing details that will be much harder to access later, I scuffed and primed the underside of the exposed glareshield area and painted it matte black:

I next took the opportunity to fit and drill the mounting holes for the Classic Aero glareshield trim piece I picked up. In retrospect it would have been better to do this before painting the underside, but it worked out fine.

This is going to look dynamite when it's all finished, not to mention potentially protecting my noggin:

I temporarily installed the roll bar, clecoed the windshield in place, and traced around the base of it with a sharpie:

Then I ran masking tape along the marked line, and scuffed the skin:

Result, a pre-scuffed area under where the windshield will eventually go:

I next clecoed the skin to the fuselage for the final time, sealing in between the skin and firewall with RTV. This step is intended to keep fumes out; I still need to eventually come back and seal the gaps around the relief notches in the curved portion of the firewall. The top skin won't actually be riveted to the firewall at this stage, since I still need to be able to remove the cowl mounting flange to fine-tune the fit and install the cowl fasteners.

By reaching through the avionics access holes and the various openings in the instrument panel, I was able to solo rivet the skin to the three longitudinal ribs and the top of the panel. I did have to use a handful of MK-319 blind rivets in places where I simply couldn't fit a bucking bar, but for the most part I was able to drive all these rivets myself.

Then I continued riveting down the sides of the panel and subpanel until I reached the longerons. These rivets I was also able to do solo, although it was tough in several spots. Reaching through the triangular air intake holes with a bucking bar is painful but doable.

At this point I stopped riveting and masked off the glareshield area for painting:

I primed and painted the top of the glareshield the same matte black as the underside. This area may or may not get a upholstered cover in the future, but having paint here won't hurt, and doing it now is a no-brainer.

Not bad looking. The contour of the painted edge can be imprecise, since the bottom of the windshield will have a significant fairing that will cover all this.

For the final skin-to-longeron joints I recruited a friend to run the rivet gun while I contorted myself painfully into the fuselage to buck the rivets. I pre-marked the correct rivet lengths on the fuselage so there'd be no question about which size rivet to put in each hole.

We were able to drive all the longeron rivets with no blind rivets used, although it took some creativity to buck a few of them. I used every one of my different-sized tungsten bars, and even used the end of a crowbar to buck two particular rivets that couldn't be reached any other way.

What a milestone! Having the last major piece of the fuselage riveted permanently feels like a huge accomplishment. Hope I didn't forget to finish anything under there…

I had always intended to build access panels into the forward fuselage skin to give occasional access to the avionics mounted underneath, but hadn't gotten around to it yet. Then Van's came out with their own access panel kit, which saved me the hassle of completely building them from scratch.

The installation of this kit is pretty straightforward. First I set the top skin in place with enough clecoes to make it conform to its final shape in the area where the panels will go:

Using the provided tabs, I clecoed the hole doublers to the firewall:

Then I match drilled all the rivet holes through the doublers into the skin. You're also supposed to drill the screw holes up to the final #19 size at this point, but I decided to drill them only to #30 to match the pre-punched #30 holes in the access panel covers. You'll see why in a moment.

With the doublers removed, I clecoed the panel covers to the skin and carefully traced around the outside with a fine-tip marker:

I used the air nibbler to rough-cut the holes in the skin. No going back now!

To finish the holes I used a series of grinding wheels, sanding drums, and files, iteratively sneaking up to the cut line:

If you take care and work slowly, you can get a good fit here. (maybe in a future RV kit these holes will be CNC-cut, wouldn't that be nice?)

I'm happy with the way these holes finally ended up… I have an even and consistent panel gap all around the perimeter of both panel covers:

With the holes complete, the temporary locating tabs removed, and everything deburred, I clecoed the doublers to the inside of the skin, then clecoed the skin to the fuselage:

At this point I clecoed the cover plates to the doublers, positioned to give an even panel gap all the way around, and drilled the #30 holes up to #19. Doing it this way adds a couple minutes of extra work, but it ensures that everything lines up perfectly. You probably don't have to do this step with the skin mounted to the airplane, but I wanted everything to assume its final shape before drilling.

After that I deburred and dimpled all the holes, and riveted the nutplates to the doublers. Then before riveting the doublers in place I applied a thin bead of RTV to seal out water:

After riveting I cleaned up the squeeze-out, giving a pair of nice-looking holes:

Skin installed back on the airplane for one last test fit:

The panel covers fit so well I didn't even bother running any screws in:

These access panels will be invaluable for maintaining the various things hidden under the top skin, not to mention riveting the top skin in place when I get to that step.