Today I started off by prepping the corners of my recent heat exchanger BID cover for glass. I had actually glassed on a couple plies of BID during the initial glassing of the heat exchanger cover, but with so much finagling of the glass to get it to lay down right, the corner plies were mangled beyond use so I just pulled off the blobs of BID and chucked ’em.
Now it’s time to remedy the exposed corners immediately adjacent to the AN fittings (black caps) on the oil inlet and outlet tubes of the heat exchanger. I knifed some dead glass away and sanded the corner areas in prep for the 2-ply BID layups.
I then laid up 2 plies of BID on each corner and peel plied the layups.
I then got to work on the left GIB armrest forward composite mounting bracket that will also house the GIB PTT button & GIB headset jacks on the front face of it (which will get attached to this bracket frame later). I used a 2″ thick urethane foam block for the form and cut the block 3″ long.
I then sanded the foam block form into shape, radiused the corner edges for glass and taped it up with duct tape.
I then cut out 3 strips of 3″ x 8″ BID and 2 strips of UNI the same dimensions for a total of 5 plies of glass. I then put the glass into plastic for a prepreg setup. I also mounted the left GIB armrest forward mounting bracket form onto a vertical stand to make laying up the glass onto it much easier.
Here’s another shot of the left GIB armrest forward mounting bracket form attached to its vertical stand.
I then laid up the 2 sets of prepregged glass so that the layup schedule was a simple BID-UNI-BID-UNI-BID pattern with the UNI plies at a 30° bias, with each UNI ply in the opposite direction. I then of course peel plied the layup.
Yet another shot of the 5-ply glass layup for the left GIB armrest forward mounting bracket.
With the same epoxy I also whipped up some micro to pour into a hardpoint divot that I had created at the left GIB armrest forward mounting point.
By this time, the layups on the two corners of the heat exchanger had cured. I pulled the peel ply and cleaned up the layups while they were still in that nice “green” stage.
Here’s another shot of the layups on the two corners near the AN fittings of the heat exchanger.
Tomorrow I’ll continue to work on both the heat exchanger and heating/air ducts while also working on the left GIB armrest forward composite mounting bracket.