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Fitting cabin top

6

60av8tor

Well Known Member
After a 6-month delay, I've finally started back on the build. I don't have man-power very close, so I tried building a make-shift lift to raise and lower the top myself (wife is just not tall enough to assist). This was an unmitigated disaster; no way I was trusting my fuse under the contraption that I built:D Any ideas from anyone that did something similar would be welcome.

Also, just to quiet a bit of doubt in the back of my mind, seems like the cabin door frame opening is a good 1/4" wider than the fuse pieces it is supposed to fit between. Seems pretty straight forward, but am I missing something here?
 
I am not a big guy, but I had no trouble just lifting the top on an off from the side. You will be doing this about a zillion times.

Measure the distance between the fuselage bulkheads and transfer that to your door frame verticals. You will see that almost all of the flange gets trimmed off.
 
Yeah, I just muscled it on and off solo. I'd pick it up basically by standing up and letting it ride on my shoulders under the middle with my hands pressing outwards just behind the aft edge of the door cutouts. Then I would just walk over and step up into the fuse using a step stool and lower it in place. Reverse the process to take it off.
 
I went to the extent of putting pulleys and rope to ceiling since I would be removing it many times by myself. Worked real well to lift for tweaking, sometimes a second person was needed to relocate.
 
I got pretty good at taking it on and off myself. I didn't think it was that big of deal.
 
An excellent manufacturer of sailboat equipment sells a [URL="http://www.harken.com/article.aspx?id=18798]line of hoists[/URL] and one of them might do the job.

Dave
 
Auburntsts said:
Yeah, I just muscled it on and off solo. I'd pick it up basically by standing up and letting it ride on my shoulders under the middle with my hands pressing outwards just behind the aft edge of the door cutouts. Then I would just walk over and step up into the fuse using a step stool and lower it in place. Reverse the process to take it off.
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This. Depending on your height and the height of the step up (stepover?) to climb in to the airplane, it might be worthwhile to make a plywood step-stool at the appropriate height to ease the ingress/egress problem carrying the cabin top.
 
Auburntsts said:
Yeah, I just muscled it on and off solo. I'd pick it up basically by standing up and letting it ride on my shoulders under the middle with my hands pressing outwards just behind the aft edge of the door cutouts. Then I would just walk over and step up into the fuse using a step stool and lower it in place. Reverse the process to take it off.
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Thanks all for the tips. I'll have to experiment with this method.
 
60av8tor said:
Thanks all for the tips. I'll have to experiment with this method.
Click to expand...

Another tip is to get two boards, each a foot or so longer than the fuselage is wide at 1) the door cut-out and 2) the baggage compartment.

What you do is lay the boards across the fuselage with 6" of each board sticking out of the fuselage on both sides. One board goes near the front of the door opening, one goes across the skins on the sides of the baggage compartment.

Then, you carry the cabin top to the fuselage from the side and set down the "far" side of the cabin top on the two boards somewhere in the middle of the fuselage. You're still holding the other side of the cabin top and are still standing outside of the fuselage. After that, you simply slide the cabin top over - across the boards until you can rest "your" side of it on the 6" of board(s) sticking out past the fuselage on your side of the airplane.

Next, you use the two boards as a prop while you align the cabin top. Remove the boards, and voila! The cabin top drops right into place. Or not. In which case, you take it off and sand some more.

Clear as mud?
 
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Kyle Boatright said:
Another tip is to get two boards, each a foot or so longer than the fuselage is wide at 1) the door cut-out and 2) The fuselage in the baggage compartment....
Next, you use the two boards as a prop while you align the cabin top. Remove the boards, and voila! The cabin top drops right into place. Or not. In which case, you take it off and sand some more.

Clear as mud?
Click to expand...

Ahhh, Kyle, I like this idea - leave it to the engineer:D. Thanks!!
 
Just want to thank everyone for the ideas. Just tried Todd's method and worked like a champ - other than it not fitting and needed yet more sanding:rolleyes: Pretty embarrassing to not come up with that one on my own:eek:. I'll blame it on my 6-months of not building!
 
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