September 18, 2020
I’m finding it harder and harder to find things to do on the plane, so I decided to make the leap and start working on the canopy. First step is to fit the roll bar, which means making up some spacers. These are very similar, but slightly different from each other.
I measured out the mounting locations on the fuselage very carefully. If you’re off just a little here, you’ll end up hitting the longeron, which is a very bad thing. Luckily I missed them by just a hair, exactly what you want to do. Drill these #40 at first and don’t upsize them until you can hold the rollbar in place and match drill everything.
Our roll bar came a little bit undersized and had to be opened up to fit the fuselage correctly. Van’s says you can just lean into it or pull on it, but this thing isn’t moving. I ended up using a technique last used while changing ball joints on a truck. Putting one end under the floor jack and using a wooden rod to reach the other end allowed me to get a lot of force on the roll bar as I extended the jack. This puts a lot of things under a lot of pressure, so if you’re going to do this, be careful things don’t go flying, it will hurt.
For final install I cut out a recess from the underside of the canopy deck to allow access for a 7/16″ socket. Without doing this, I don’t see how you’ll ever get the nut and bolt installed. The instructions say to install the front support brace now as well. I wouldn’t do this. Later in the instructions it has you shim the roll bar to get the windshield fully adjusted. As soon as you shim the roll bar, you ruin the support brace if its already drilled. Hold off on this step until later.
-Paul
(Total Build Time: 629.6)