Side panel upholstery and floor doubler

TLDR

• Installed the front side skin upholstery

Details

Copilot side

The leather panel on the front side skin was finally installed today. It took really long time for some reason. There were total of 16 rivnuts I had to do, each rivnut took like 15 minutes or so on average.

Yesterday I already drilled the pre-marked holes on the leather piece. So today I started with the copilot side to line up the leather panel to the side skin. Then matched drilled only 2 holes. I then installed the rivnuts on these 2 holes and put on screws to attach the panel to the skin.

With the panel attached, I match drilled the other 6 holes. After drilling I took the leather panel off, and enlarged all holes to add rivnut.

One of the holes drilled was too close to a side skin rib, so I patched it up with a small piece of spare aluminum and drilled another hole near it.

After that, I installed all 8 screws on the leather panel to ensure the rivnuts are aligned to the leather panel correctly.

Pilot side

The pilot side is the exact same process. This side went quicker after I’ve done the copilot side. But it was still a struggle due to the space.

Floor doubler

A couple of weeks ago when working on something I dropped the cleco plier on the floor, and it created a dent on the aluminum.

The dent was cosmetic but I was surprised how easy it is to make a dent on the floor skin. I decided to add some doubler on the floor for extra protection.

I measured some aluminum about the size of letter paper, and drilled 3.2mm rivet holes around the edge.

Then I placed the doubler on the floor to mark where it needs to have some holes to avoid sitting on top of existing rivets. After marking those locations, I drilled some larger clearance holes.

The last step, I placed the doubler near the rudder pedal and riveted them (one on each side pilot and co-pilot) on the floor. The doubler sits exactly where I will put my feet when stepping on the rudder.

Floor carpet fitting

Once the side skin leather panel and doublers are done, fitting the floor carpet was trivial. It came with velcro so it’s pretty easy to secure it.

The cut-out around the control stick box was a little tight. I might cut away just a little bit of material to provide more clearance.