Another 2-day update here.

I started out by doing the final trimming (Fein saw) and sanding of the instrument panel leg hole reinforcement flanges and wire troughs.  As you can see, I also drilled a hole in each one to allow for a wire-securing zip tie.

Here’s a front side view (you can see I’m getting close to finishing the nose hatch latch pull handle safety guard as well).

I’ve been scratching my head the last few days to finalize the solution of the issue where the front flange of the aft nose cover scrapes the aft top corner edge of the nose as the cover is opened and closed.  Clearly if I left it as is and continued on to paint, the paint on the top aft edge of the nose would be worn away in a few weeks.  I had to remove this clearance issue either through repositioning the front flange of the nose cover (further aft), or knocking down the edge of the aft nose corner.  But both of those solutions had pros and cons and helped create other issues of sorts.

Moving the nose cover flange aft appeared the best solution on the surface, but the geometry of the CAMLOCs is already set and it would have been a fairly in-depth and lengthy modification.  Radiusing the aft top edge of the nose would be fairly easy, but then I would have a distinctly curved edge at the seam between nose and cover.

What to do?  How about a little of both, with an added lip on the front edge of the nose cover to hide the overtly radiused edge?

I started by aggressively sanding the nose top aft edge (pic 1), for a good 5 rounds, mounting the aft nose cover and checking the clearance between the nose corner edge and nose cover flange before each round of sanding.  Here we have the final sanded corner edge (pic 2).

I also did a few iterations of skimming some surface material off the front flange face of the aft nose cover.  Here I have it marked for trimming (pic 1), and after I used the Dremel tool to reduce the surface, at which point I sanded it aggressively with 36 grit sandpaper (pic 2).

I also spent another hour knocking down the latest micro addition to the aft lower corner interfaces with the canopy, and around the turtledeck.  Although I still need to do the very final sanding with the top cowl in place, I went ahead and cut the excess fuel tank vent tubing off each side.  I have to say I’m very pleased with the outcome.

It was very late at night, and I was getting ready to close up shop for the evening when I started thinking about the top side paint scheme.  I grabbed some electrical tape and ran it down the side to simulate the top black stripe.  Above/inside that will be all blue.  I think it will look perfectly acceptable!

The front right corner of the aft nose cover was flared out a bit too much and need to be brought in closer to the nose, just forward of the right canard leading edge, at it’s root. I cut the inside of the nose cover with 3 grooves using the Fein saw, to allow me to curve the corner inwards.  I then put flox in the grooves and laid up a small 2-ply patch of BID over it before setting the cover back into place on the nose.  I then duct taped the corner to suck it inward to position while it cured.

Here’s another shot of that… I used the screw driver as a spacer to push inboard a bit more.  Also note the micro along the front edge of the aft nose cover has been sanded off.

Yep, I sanded down the aft “wings” of the aft nose cover to have them better align with the surface of the sidewall in the area under the front canopy lip.  While cleaning up the aft nose cover, I also sanded the micro away to get back down glass to allow me to add a lip to the front edge of the nose cover.  This will allow me to hide the aggressively rounded top aft corner edge of the nose, and create a tight seam betwixt nose cover and nose.

After taping up the round nose corner edge, I laid up 1 ply BID on the underside of the aft nose cover existing lip and peel plied it.  I then mounted the aft nose cover on the bird and installed all the hardware.  After filling in the small gap with micro along the front edge, I then laid up 2 plies of BID across the front edge of the nose cover, over the original single ply of BID from before (pic 1).  This gives me a 3 ply added lip, which will have micro over it… I think this should be plenty strong for an added 0.3″ wide lip.

After it cured, I removed all the tape and peel ply, and then marked the new front lip for trimming (pic 2).

Starting tomorrow I plan on working the final fit of the nose hatch door and start preparing for micro finishing the nose.  I also plan on doing the very final sanding and touchups on the D-deck, longerons and lower aft canopy corner interfaces.