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!