December 23, 2007 - Cabin Air Vents

Then I match-drilled black eyeball, beige plastic plenum and aluminum bracket all together.  I also had to trim a corner of the black eyeball so the assembly would fit between the panel and side skin.  I also trimed off some of the plenum so you couldn't see it behind the black eyeball.

 

Actually, I trimmed too much off the black eyeball on my first attempt, and ruined it.  But I figured I might be able to get one cheap from a builder who went with the nice aluminum vents.  Sure enough, a builder from Texas offered to ship me one -- not even charging me shipping.  But Mike Bullock, a local builder, offered to give me his as well, so I drove out to his house and checked out his RV-7 project.  He lent me some high-temp firewall sealant as well.  Mike is about where I was exactly a year ago and his project looks great.  If you don't know, Mike has one of the better builder Web Pages around.  http://rvplane.com If I was doing it over again, the two I'd refer to would be his and of course Dan's. 

So the mystery of these holes in the side skins is finally solved.  If the drawings or the instructions say what these holes are for, I never saw it.  But after mounting the air vent assembly to the panel, it was obvious that the aluminum bracket gets riveted to the side skin.  I match-drilled the brackets, using the side skin holes as a drilling template.