After speaking with Vans to figure out why I was struggling to get the F-711 bulkhead to fit, we discovered the bars on F-711 were riveted on the wrong side of the fuselage. I flipped the bulkhead and the clecos fit in place with minimal resistance. Some minor rework is required.
I drilled out the rivets holding the bars in place.
The bars were riveted to the proper side of the bulkhead and everything fit much better. I’m glad I reached out to Vans.
Now that everything is clecoed in place, the next step is to remove any twist from the fuselage. I used digital levels on the forward and aft sections of the structure to ensure everything was zeroed out.
The last thing I did was match drill the 4 stiffeners.
Here’s a shot of the clecos protruding through the stiffeners. You can see I used tape to hold things in place while drilling.
