Forward Fuselage (8th Incident)

Still working the forward fuselage.
There is a lot happening in the front of the aircraft.

The brackets the engine mount bolts to are similar, but different then the Cessna brackets.  The plans call for 7 rivets on each side of the bracket for a total of 14 rivets.  It looked a little light duty for holding an engine on the front of the plane.

The Cessna brackets are triangular while the ones supplied by M-Aero are more rectangular.

Being rectangular and with the amount of overlap on the forward fuselage side channels, I was able to get 9 rivets per side.

That's 4 rivets more per channel.

A slight increase on weight, but more structural support for the engine.

The lower forward fuselage channels that support the floor were another story.  The prints called for 7 rivets on each side as before.  (14 total.)  The big difference is the design of the channel.

It is more like a squared off "U" and the bracket fits inside of the channel.  One side of the bracket has total surface contact with the channel.  The other side has about 2/3 contact with the channel.

That means less riveting area.

I was able to get 5 rivets nicely spaced on the 2/3 contacted side and 10 on the full contact wide.  (15 total.)

One thing I need to figure out is what to do with the firewall.  On the bottom of the firewall, where the forward tunnel area is, there are two wings of material that bend into the tunnel area.

Before I rivet the engine mount brackets on to the channels, I have to find whether the firewall wings rivet to the side channels.

Enough for this weekend.

Brian