With the doors in place, the steel receptacle sleeves that will accept the door pins were positioned with wooden spacers, filleted in place with micro, and covered with BID.
The carbon fiber structural members that fit around the doors and across the ceiling were sanded to fit the inner surface of the fuselage. The seat belt hard points mounts were fabricated from wood shaped to fit inside the carbon beam.
The foam was dug out from between the fuselage halves and filled with micro, followed by a 2xBID tape to fillet the door flange to the fuselage.
The cowling top half was cut at the proper distance from the firewall, with hot glue retainers added to keep it in place as the cut progressed. The inner surface next to the firewall was then protected with duct tape, and a wet tape was used to make a flange. After curing, the fuselage and flange were drilled for clecoes, the cowling was removed, and sanded to clean up.
The door cutouts were hot-glued back in place after covering their inside surfaces with duct tape. Layup tape was then used to create an inner door flange.
Using the supplied templates, the door openings were cut out the fuselage to fit the doors. This was an iterative process because the templates (flat) will not conform properly to the fuselage (compound curvature).
Using the canard template, the canard doghouse was cut out flush with the top of the canard bulkhead.
After the interior micro and tapes cured during a very nice Christmas break, it was time to finish the outside join line.
The duct tape was removed and the join area was sanded flush and smooth. Micro was smoothed on to fill and voids, followed by BID layups and peel ply along the entire perimeter. As well, the join along the roof and the firewall flange was sanded and bonded with layups.
With the fuselage halves clecoed, coarse accessory holes were cut where the door openings will be to provide access to the inside.
A vat of micro was prepared, as well as some BID layup tapes. The clecoes were removed and micro was applied to the top of the firewall flange. Duct tape was then applied to the exterior fuselage seam to prevent too much squish-out of micro. Clecoes were re-attached and micro was applied to fill the seam between the fuselage halves, smoothed, and covered with a layup.
The leftover flanges were trimmed from the top and bottom fuselage halves and all mating surfaces on both halves were sanded. The two halves were joined, aligned, and clecoed together.
After getting the top and bottom aligned and fixtures, the gap was less than 1/2″ all the way around.
I am trying to keep with the philosophy of doing as much as possible with the two fuselage halves before joining. A double layer of fine BID was placed around the periphery of the windows to provide more skin thickness for the interior trim to mount to. This was an excellent suggestion by Ron Stacy, who has shared many valuable build tips with me. The midline NACA air scoop was also fitted and glued in place.
Based on the flow modeling reported previously, I enlarged the NACA ducts by making them deeper by about 1 inch. This should deliver significantly more air to the plenum for cooling the engine and for use by the engine oil cooler. Disadvantages include a slight loss of headroom above the back seat.
Instead of a nose-mounted oil cooler, I am using that location for a fresh-air inlet with a variable-opening door. I fabricated a door for the inlet using a foam-core sandwich panel, fit it to the opening in the fuselage, and attached it with a hinge just forward of the opening.
A fresh air distribution box was fabricated with flanges to attach to the fuselage and holes for standard SCAT ducts to route the fresh air.
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