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I put in some serious hours on the project today. I first worked on the angle clips that hold the forward skin stiffeners to the firewall. I clamped the angle clips to the stiffeners and then removed them both and drilled and clecoed them together. Then I put the assembly back in and drilled the angle clips to the firewall angle. Worked pretty good.
I then moved on to the lower longerons. The replacement angle arrived last week, so I was able to cut these to length and cut back one leg of the angle at the forward end. I then trial fitted them and put a slight twist in the angle. Once I was satisfied the fit was good, I drilled the bolt holes through the lower longeron and into the firewall bracket. I debated about whether to put the lower skin back on and drill the rest of the lower longeron, but decided to wait until I had the other forward parts in place. It’s much easier messing around in the forward fuselage area with the bottom skin off.
I next attacked the F-684 gussets. The plans have you cut out an odd shaped area, make two bends, and drill multiple holes. Doing all of that took 2 hours for the two of them. Very time consuming. It would sure be nice to have this part pre-punched. After all of that fiddling around, they did not fit well. I had to file away more of the cut out area to make the gusset align with the bottom of the skin stiffener and 1/8″ back from the firewall. Once that was fitting better, the bends were not working well. That’s when I decided to call it quits. Now, after looking on Matthew Brandes’ site, I see I am not alone. I was thinking that one additional bend would help things align better, and that’s exactly what Matthew did.