Side upholstery panels

TLDR

• Installed side upholstery panels

Detail

Installing the side upholstery panels was not as daunting as they said. There were a lot of rivnuts though.

On the back of the panel, they already marked where to drill. So I just followed the plan and drilled all holes to 3/16.

Then I transferred the holes to the airplane by match drilling. I enlarged all the holes and installed M4 rivnuts. They will be used to hang the panel.

After that, I did a quick test fit of the panel. 2 or 3 holes did not have good alignment with the rivnuts. They were about 1/3 holes offset. I am not going to worry about them now. During final finishing I will probably just enlarge them to capture the entire rivnut.

Air vents

One slightly tricky thing was that i needed to make a cut on the leather to put the air vent.

The aluminum skin already have a 2 inch hole, so all I had to do was to make an identical hole at the same location on the leather.

I did this by using a hole puncher. I find it much easier to control than using router or dremel or whatever. Once the hole was punched, I made a round of quick dremel sanding as a final touch.

Inserting the vent was very tight, I am not going to insert them now because i am not sure I will be asked to remove this upholstery during final inspection. Removing the vent will be a pain since it fits so tightly.