Re: Building the EX3 - Tips & Hints
FITTING INTERIOR PANELS
Next you will be glad you jumped ahead and fitted the interior panel now instead of on Page 17.1 of the FINISH MANUAL. You have to fit and drill out the panels to connect to the floorboard, sides of extended baggage area and to each other. It's much safer to do it now than after covering because you will be drilling from inside the cockpit outwards through floorboards, etc. and it would be easy to go through the cover by accident.
Also, I will install some web pockets into the panels since it will be easier to see the best places to install them so that the nuts don't interfere with anything on the inside of the interior panels. Now we can simply look from the outside in at fuel lines, stringer, tubes, etc. and mark them on the inside of the panels.
The first thing we will do is take some wide masking tape (green tape actually works better than masking tape as it comes up better, later) and put it down all the way around the floorboard edges where the panels will touch. This is to protect the floor and also to give us something to mark the hole locations that we drill through the interior panels and into the floorboard. If you left the plastic wrap on the aluminum extended baggage area panels, you can just mark on the plastic as long as you leave it on until the finish.
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Then I mark the masking tape where the ends of the sides of the floorboards end so I know I can't drill a hole in the interior panels past that point. The manual is missing the figures that show where to drill the holes so I will add them later. They are not exactly correct so just use it as a general guideline on where to drill the holes. It doesn't really matter just so long as you get them into places that will secure it. Some of the holes they call for in the figure to drill would be outside the raised, outside lip on the floorboard (where I marked the ends on the tape) so you will have a hole in your panel that won't work because there is nothing behind the hole you drilled in the panel to secure the plastic push rivet into! At least with there being no cover on the fuse yet, you can just LOOK BEFORE YOU DRILL and see where you are drilling into.
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The reason for the masking tape is that after we drill the holes through the panel and floorboard edge, we will mark the holes and after that, you can't see the holes in the floorboard behind the panels once it's covered. Later on the finish we will set the panels in place and line up the holes in the panels with the marks on the tape on the floorboard to make installing the push pins easy..
After drilling and marking the masking tape, we will leave this tape down until we are completely finished installing the panels during the "finish" stage of construction.
Also put a few layers of tape over the bolt heads on the outsides of the rudder pedals to keep from scratching the panels. We didn't install the rudder cables yet because it's easier if they are not in the way when we do this.
I guess I'm cheap.....but I save the big masking paper used to protect the interior panels during shipping. You will need to use them later when working on fitting your cowl to the boot cowl after paint. This "gerbermask" is very expensive and it's perfectly reusable, so just save it out of the way somewhere like I do with it stuck on the side of this cabinet.
Also, I found it easier to just drill the holes from the outside of the fuselage since we don't have the cover on, especially up around the seat base that gets in the way and you have to have a side drill. Plus, by drilling from the outside, you can see your edge clearance better from the top of the floorboard.
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Start setting the panels in place. Note that you will have to remove the pre-installed throttle/prop control cover plate on the big, left panel and slide the handles through the slots already cut into the panel.
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Just follow the FINISH MANUAL around page 17.1 along except for a couple of things:
DON'T install any of the actual black push rivets yet, just use clecos in every hole for now since we are going to remove the panels now.
DON'T install all the fuel selector fittings yet;
DON'T stick any velcro on BOTH sides of anything yet. I just cut and stick one side onto 1 surface (like under the upper lips of all the interior panels where it sits down on the fuselage window areas.) On the side tubes that get velcro, you can stick them to the fuse side now and leave the paper on the sticky side of the other side on for now and we will pull it off when we do the final install. We just want it in place now along with the felt so the panels will be in the proper places before we drill the bottom and side holes in the panels.
For "Adhesion Promoter" I like these small packages you can get. They have a saturated sponge inside the package that is good for 1 time use and then throw away. https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0...?ie=UTF8&psc=1. These are a 5 pack on Amazon.
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So just set them in place and see if you need to trim any areas (like around this fuel line on the left side).
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The left, center panel is the first to fit because it HAS to have it centered on the fuel selector fittings sticking out and with the round tension know centered on the hole. Install that and then fit the other panels around it.
Next, take your silver sharpie and mark the locations of any tubes, fuel lines, stringers, etc. on the outside of any panels that you may want to install the web pockets on so you won't position it so there would be any nuts interfering with any of these things.
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Here are a few locations I like for the pockets:
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These are some pockets that CHUCK & RYAN found and I get them off Amazon. They have rectangular ones and some with rounded corners. The rounded corner one is also great to put on the back of the front seat. Recently the rounded ones I have not been able to find anywhere.
I use #6 machine screws 32x3/8" ; #6 washers and 3/8" locknuts to install them.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0...?ie=UTF8&psc=1
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0...?ie=UTF8&psc=1
