Cleaning up a lot of little things.  Here is a spot on the body that was bubbled and mostly gelcoat.  Ground it out, heat and flattened the fiberglass with a heatgun and pressed it between  some angle to straighten .  Finally layed up a couple of thin layers to add strength and bondoed to smooth it out.

There were a couple of spots that required this treatment.


Here is where the pre-drilled holes didn’t quite line up with where the floorpan actually fell.  Had to drill a new one and fill the old.


FAA required picture of me working.  Gotta remember to get more of these.  Since I am usually working alone it means getting out the tripod and setting up the camera timer.  Coffee fueled build process.

Holes are easy to drill, but each one needs a nutplate and there sure are a lot of them.  Here I am drilling and mounting the chin window floating nutplates.


There’s a lot more fiberglass work than I anticipated.  This is the lip of the floorpan along the base of the instrument pod.  The drilled holes cut through the edge of the lip. 

I had to first cut away the fiberglass with the partial holes.  A dam was built with packing tape and a tape covered aluminum sheet.  Then an thin layer of flox to allow the edge to form, then five layers of cloth.  I’ll have to sand a lot of it down, but it should allow for a tight fit with plenty of meat around the holes.  It’ll be a lot “taller” than the original lip.


In a few places I had to shim the pan, especially up around the curve of the top of the body.  A layer of foam sanded to the correct thickness, then glassed over.  To mount the nutplates behind the lip I had to cut a strip of aluminum, mount the nutplate, then rivet it outside the foamed area.

Tags: Windscreen, Bodybuilding