January 27, 2008 - Lower Emp Fairing, Firewall Eyeballs
 A quick trip to Clements, the local hardware store, yielded a #36 bit, which I needed to drill the lower emp fairings to the fuse longeron, per the drawings.  Thanks to the miracle of Van's kits, the pre-drilled holes matched perfectly, and I mean perfectly, with the rivets in the longerons.  When I match-drilled the lower emp fairings to the longeron, I was essentially drilling out the rivets. 
 
Near the aft end, I had to drill through the cover piece, instead of the side skin.  The longeron had not been previously drilled at this point. 
 
 Next, I tapped the longeron for 6-32.  That cup on top of the aft deck has some cutting oil in it.
 

Both fairings screw down with flush #6 screws.  I countersunk the upper fairing but the lower fairing was pretty thin for countersinking.  But it couldn't be dimpled or I'd have to countersink the side skin and longeron.  That would mess up the tapped hole, not to mention my natural hesistency in taking more metal out of the main longeron.

In the end, I decided to countersink the thin lower fairing, evening though the hole would be much wider than the #6 screw.  I figured that would be OK; the screw would still prevent the fairing from moving laterally. 

 
 All done.  The screws are reasonably flush and the fairing tight and secure. 
 
I was tired of working on fairings and eyeballs, so for a diversion, I broke out a couple of baffle pieces and edge-smoothed them.  I've heard the baffles are a bear, but I have the latest Vans baffle kit, which I'm hoping makes doing the baffles easier.
 
 Back to the firewall eyeballs.  The fuel pump firewall doubler was complicating the eyeball installation.  I'm trying to keep the control cable location as close to the drawings placement as possible.  I decided I could get pretty close if I used a spacer (doubler) for the eyeball as well.  So here I'm fashioning two spacers. 
 
 Expanding on Bill B's work yesterday, I drilled more holes in the firewall for the eyeballs.
 
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