Door Frame Edges and Strut Bracket

A little more work on the doors and I'll be stopping for a while. I need to figure out some things on the exterior handles before I do all the finishing work.

I continued with what I could and that was thickening up the lip around the door frame edge. I used the Mcmaster Carr seal as a mold. I filled the seal up with epoxy/flox, tapped the seal into place with a rubber mallet, and then closed and latched the doors to let it dry. The next day things looked pretty good but the edges needed to be filled in a few areas and the entire process repeated in others where the epoxy door edge didn't make good contact. I also installed the planearound delrin pin guide blocks (sorry I don't have pics of that).

Here is detailed brake down of the tasks I completed
Sat 15th -4.5 hrs-

put seal back on RH Door frame

cleco RH door to fuselage

redrill holes for hinges as required

recountersink holes for hinges as required

screw door onto hinges

close door and test fit

work on gas strut bracket on both doors

install delrin guide blocks

find and mark thin areas of gutter for build up

mix epoxy and sqeeze into seal

close and latch doors while epoxy dries Sun 16th -2.0hrs- sand the door frame re-epoxy areas that didn't work first time later that day take the canopy off

Total Time on Doors

55.0

You can see the area where I had to build up the lip. The seal leave behind a nice ridged edge.

This is the wooden spacer I made to locate the door strut bracket.

Starting Door Seals

With the door separation saga behind me (at least for the time being) I decided to move on and work on the door seals. As I mentioned in a previous post I made a mark 0.25" from the inside door skin down onto the lip of the cabin top gutter. Today is the day to trim and sand the cabin top gutter to get the doors to fit with the McMaster Carr door seal. 

I'll let the pictures so you my results...

Date and Time

February 1st

-5.0 hrs- Door trim work

Total Time on Door So Far

32.25 hrs

Unseasonably warm day allowed me to do all the nasty sanding and trim work outdoors! No dust in the shop this time.

After sanding down to the 0.25 mark on both sides I clecoed the door into place using my upper and lower attach tabs. With the door clecoed in place I could see places that needed a little more trimming to have that 0.25" gap I was looking for. Remove the door and the top and sand some more. The second fit looked good so I installed a small section of the door seal as a trial fit. You can see how the trim is about 50% squished which is what i was looking for. I installed the small section in a few test spots and it looked good.

Now feeling good about the depth of my gap I installed the door seal completely around the perimeter of the opening. There are a few spots where the edge is too thin to hold the seal in place, so I will go back and thicken the inside of those edges with epoxy later.

Door seal in place...looks really nice how it finishes the edge off.

I clecoed the RH door into place once again and was really happy with the results. View from inside looking forward. Notice how the seal looks uniformly pressed.

View looking aft...same thing very uniform and no gaps.

After I finished the RH door trial fit I moved on to the LH it worked on the first try! All in all a really productive day!