Today was all about finishing up the configuration and construction of my wing removal and installation dolly.  And although it required an unscheduled trip to Lowe’s for some hardware, I did exactly that.

Here we have the newly completed wing removal dolly (pic 1), and it in place to remove the left wing (pic 2).

It took about half an hour to remove the left wing as I learned the intricacies of using my new wing removal/installation dolly… since each corner can be raised or lowered elevation-wise using the repurposed trailer wheeled tongue screw jacks.

Not surprisingly, there was a lot of micro dust in the channel between the left strake and wing.

And a good bit at the outboard end of the left strake as well.

I’ll note that before I took the wing off, I inspected the wing bolt lengths inside the wing bolt channels.  Both AN8-22A bolts were about 1/8″ too short, so I swapped them out with some AN8-23A bolts I have on hand.

With the left wing off the bird, I then tried my luck at installing the wing root forward heat shield.  Ahhhh!  As I suspected it went right into place…. note to self!

I have to say that I’m really liking this new wing removal/installation dolly so far, since the wheels allow the wing to be very easily repositioned.  This allowed me to easily open up the gap in between the wing and the strake to then allow me to clear out the tape and foam from just under the top inside edge of the intersection flange on both wing and strake, respectively.

After finalizing the cleanup of the left strake’s aft top lip underside edge, I then filled the corner gap with flocro before laying up a 2-ply corner BID tape to secure the underside aft top strake flange to the aft face of the CS spar.

I then did pretty much the same thing on the top flange of the left wing, laying up a corner 2-ply BID tape overlapping from the flange bottom edge to the front face of the sheer web [I’ll note that I built the wings much earlier in the build than what the plans call for —to use as much epoxy as possible that I bought in large quantity while in Germany. So I was still a very new builder and thus why my wing work is not so beautiful!].

I then spent about half an hour cutting glass that I will layup on the bottom of the left gear leg on Guy William’s yellow Long-EZ (early tomorrow morning).

And with that, I called it a night.  Pressing forward!