Before continuing with the installation of the canopy attach angles and other subassemblies, it was time to prime and top coat the canopy frame. Below is a shot of the finished product. Note the forward tube is only top coated at the ends where it might be partially exposed. I plan on installing the glare shield which should hide the underside of the cross tube. The top side of the cross tube should be hidden by the fiberglass fairing.
The next steps involved fluting, drilling, deburring, match hole
drilling and final installation of the forward and aft canopy attach angles.
Next, the canopy frame was fitted to the fuselage with the obligatory
1/8 inch cardboard padding between the canopy frame and the fuselage,
shown below taped into place.
As I was measuring for the 7/16 inch clearance between the forward surface of the canopy frame and the instrument panel, I found that I did not have sufficient clearance. After some bending, I finally arrived at this conclusion below:
Not a very good picture, but there is a hairline crack in the butt weld! After speaking with Vans builder support, they suggested an external sleeve which I implemented as shown below, with 2 tubing halves, each with 2 rivets, and further bonded with ProSeal.
Now I found that I had even less clearance with the .035 inch thick external sleeves. In short, the canopy frame would again NOT clear the instrument panel! Back to the aggressive bending to make this thing fit....which led me to this new conclusion:
When the weld broke completely through, I removed my external sleeves and to my surprise found the factory's internal sleeve had taken a permanent set from my vigorous bending.
The next step will involve another internal sleeve, made of rod stock and 4 threaded and countersunk machine screws. Hopefully that arrangement will survive the additional bending that is going to be required to get the canopy frame to have sufficient clearance with the instrument panel! The saga continues.
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