Today ended up being primarily about working on the wheel pants and a good bit on getting the nose hatch door to latch with the added micro.

That being said, I started off by wet sanding the right elevator, after which I discovered a couple of rough spots on the top trailing edge.  So I added small dollops of micro to those spots.

I then took the right aft wheel pant outside to knock down the upper and lower micro areas I applied yesterday with my orbital & pad sanders.  I then taped up the seam edge of the forward pant half and the gear leg attach apron before reinstalling the right aft wheel pant (pic 1).

I then whipped up some more micro and applied it to the middle area between the upper and lower micro areas on the inboard side… obviously the aft was a bit lower here as compared to the forward wheel pant (pic 2).

I also added a bunch more micro to both the front and aft halves of the right wheel pant on the outboard areas… slowly getting everything leveled out on these wheel pants.

On the left wheel pant, I removed the aft half, took it outside and knocked down the micro I had slathered up on it a few days ago.  I then remounted the aft left wheel pant and finalized the sanding by hand with it in place.  The front still needs a little bit more micro, which I’ll apply the next time mix some up.

I then unexpectedly spent about 2 hours assessing the fit of the nose hatch door into the newly micro’d top nose.  I did a deep dive on determining why my 1/8″ seal was not working, and ended removing all of it one segment at a time.

With no seal on I still wasn’t getting the nose hatch door setting in place well enough for me to get the lock to actually latch… now, it would appear to be closed and latched, but if I pulled on the edge with my fingernail or a flat blade, the hatch door would pop open. Not good.

I’ve noticed that as the latch grabs the catch on the door side, it very slightly pivots towards the right.  Clearly the only thing that changed with the nose hatch door configuration was the added micro to the nose.  So, based on my hypothesis, I very slowly started to sand around the perimeter edge of the micro, focusing on the right side and specifically the right aft corner.

After about half an hour of slowly removing more of the micro edge around the nose hatch door, I finally got it to latch.

I then started to slowly add in the 1/8″ thick seal around the inside edge, but it’s simply too thick.  So I called it a night, went inside the house and ordered the same edge seal, only 1/16″ thick.  It will arrive in the next 2-3 days.

Back on the wheel pants for just a bit: I’ve been pondering and finally made the decision to pull the four (4) 2000 series CAMLOCs off the aft of each gear leg wheel pant apron and replace those with screws on the outboard side, and 4000 series (standard) CAMLOCs on the inboard side.  Over the next week I’ll start removing the 2000 series CAMLOC receptacles and slowly swap those out.

Again, still pressing forward… slowly but surely!