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i actually started with a good thorough annual and checked all ADs (service bulletins) she needed a lot of work. Did brakes tires, bearings, even had to pull the rudder pedal assemblies and weld service bulletin tabs on them for possible cracking. They weren’t cracked but they were painted black so it was hard to tell. I opted to just pull them for inspection and weld them and be 100% sure.

couldnt get a hangar and work needed to be done so started outside, engine mounts shimmed , new hoses second oil change and magnetos

Bought all new fuel and oil lines as the old ones were brittle and unchanged in along time.

did new exhaust tips and also changed out a section about 18 inches long because a portion had worn on the engine mount over time , can’t be too safe with exhaust fumes.
I even polished the tips, they came from vetterman in a very unpolished state. As seen above so I first hit them with steel wool down to 0000 ( other one in the pic ) and then polished to a mirror finish. (NIt didn’t last long though they glued pretty quickly I the airplane.

replaced the mags learned a good lesson here that newer mags have a different ignition advance and they are not necessarily interchangeable some people have done it but the people I talked with frowned upon it.

I decided I’d do a vinyl wrap, but wanted to gain some much needed experience. I have oainted many custom cars before, it was a fairly similar process but there’s always some learning curve. Decided to wrap my truck cap which had many compound curves and it taught me a lot. It didn’t match my truck so made sense as a project.

I decided I’d repair a few gauges that had lights burned out or weren’t reading correctly so a few gauges went out to Electronics international for a freshen up.

I had to repair and/ or replace some of the hinges on the cowling it had some ears broken off on the end and wasn’t closing up tight.
Also had to learn how to rivet at the same time since I’d never done any riveting before .

started out riveting with this economy squeezer broowrowed from a friend traded off a little welding of stainless for it actually.but I’d have done the welding for him just t help him out anyway. I ended up borrowing an air riveter and then buying one even though this hand squeezer worked great. I just felt I needed to return it,I had it too long and though he didn’t ask for it back it was bothering me that I had it so long.

picked a vinyl that I liked for the accent color , it’s Avery diamond blue and it looks like scattered diamonds in the paint in the right light. Used the diamond white and silver as well. Google Avery diamond blue and a great video comes up on YouTube of a jaguar done in it.

my test subject was the front wheel pant figured it was a pretty tough piece to do and it was, so I learned a lot here about doing the rest of the airplane.

Here’s my most faithful helper Juliet named for the phonetic letter J
she loves the airport and airplanes and is pretty famous at the field she helped out almost every day.

Next up I figured the cowl was another tough piece so decided to tackle that. I could also do it at home so that helped.

regardless of what the wife says, the kitchen makes for a great place to wrap the upper cowl of an airplane.

cowling came out well so Decided to moving forward.with the vinyl. I was pretty committed at this point anyway. 🤔

scetched up a drawing but plans change a little it wasn’t far off in the end but not exact either

got all the wheel pants done did these at home, while I had to be there with kids, helps to always be getting something done

after much reading on VAF and talking with Fred Stucklen (the man) as we call him because he knows just about everything! (He’s also the original builder of this fine example )
I decided to do access panels for a future avionics upgrade. So I cut some panels from some sheet aluminum. Flanges .040 / covers .032

The new larger access panels sure beat he tiny access panel I had previously (in the background ) cut the first access panel and fitted the cover just to see if it worked out before moving to the rest. These access panels were a big job. Far more work than I’d have expected. My not being able to be around 2 part products made it a little tough to do things the usual way. (If I did it again I’d probably use marine 5200 after my testing I did proved to be pretty durable) but I used pro seal on these..

I cant be around anything 2 part so my good friend Don C clamped the pieces with A TON of clamps to be sure the flanges were nice and tight with pro seal. Forever grateful to Don for putting so much effort into this for me. Can’t ask for a better friend than that.

Vans RV6a