#Northernfox Build

[David47]

Others have given good advice, but another opinion FWIW: Sand blasting is good, in fact it's beneficial. Don't leave any of these areas that look dodgy, they may cover nasties such as metal cancer. Take the time now and do it properly otherwise it will always be in the back of your mind. As for Hysol, I needed to move couple of ribs that weren't located well so used a heat gun, around 250C and softened it enough to move things around.

I know it sounds a bit daunting but you'll have (a) peace of mind and (b) good working knowledge of your aircraft structure. Based on what you've done, you may be able to make a case to be considered as part builder. Good luck with your decision.

[tracstarr]

Well, no one in my local area I've contacted will even consider touching it. Great.

[mscotter]

you could always buy a sandblasting rig and start doing it yourself. I think you can get them from harbor freight. Not challenging, just tedious...

[efwd]

if you have some MEK on hand, it will clear paint from the surface with little effort. try it out and see what it is exactly that your looking at underneath. Then, I would do the sandblaster from Harbor Freight myself if the airframe looked unscathed under that paint removed with MEK.
Eddie

[tracstarr]

Well, two bits of news that's exciting for me.

1- got my shipment from Kitfox with my FFW, LLE and some other bits I needed.

2 - finally (as in yesterday) found someone who is willing and able to take on the blasting and powder coating of my frame. He's done some air frames in the past. Excited to get going on this now.

I guess my next post will be dis-assembly of the entire fuselage which was complete. Oh well.

[tracstarr]

So, a few small updates. Sorry, no pics.

As posted here and in my last post here - I had to tear down my fuselage to prep for sandblasting.

I managed to get the vertical stabilizer ribs off without too much damage using a heat gun. They should be re-usable if I can clean them up without damaging them.

Everything else came off easily and I taped up the long aluminum stringers on the sides and bottom of the body. I also left the aluminum door frame pieces on.

It finally got blasted over the weekend after sitting in the shop for about 3 weeks.

Turns out - those flimsy aluminum pieces warp pretty easily with blasting (from just the heat). So, the shop took them off as well as the stringers. No big deal, i'll have to re-make them.

All that said, the blasting went well and all welds were perfect. No cracks no rust no anything found under all that junk. Needless to say I am very very happy to know this - and the blasting and re-coat is well worth it.

[tracstarr]

Been a little while - I'm sure you all know how it goes (or doesn't) sometimes.

So my story continues with the pickup of my newly coated frame. Oh man I was happy with it. Absolutely amazing work. Shout out to Performance Finishing & Fabrication Inc in Vars Ontario Canada!

Got her back to my shop and just caressed her for a while. Well worth it!

The next steps after that was many many evenings sorting through the boxes of parts that came with it. It was a total disaster. Many parts had no labels (worn away by years of sitting there) and some were rusted out. Good thing is they are all easily replaceable... bad thing is I have no idea what they are and what to get.

I just started pinning things the the wall under different groups when I figure out what they were. Part of the problem with a partially built kit (in my case) was it was pretty hard to determine what parts were used and what parts I should be hoping to find without reading every single page. And I did. It only helped a little.

So after a few nights of that I figured it was time to move on and wing it as I went.

Life then got in the way for a few weeks.

I was able to in that time take measurements of all the completed wing assembly to make sure it was all within spec as it was not a factory built wing. Everything looked good and was off in only a few places by about 1/8". About the biggest find was only 4/5 rivets in each of the drag/anti-drag attachments. I should be able to get one more in.

Finally back at it this week with some help. Ordered up a bunch of missing items from kitfox on day one - and some of the consumables I'm going to need.

Today with some help again we leveled up the fuselage and mounted the wings to verify dihedral, sweep, washout and wing twist. With only a small adjustment everything looked near perfect.

From there since we have to wait on some hysol, we got the firewall setup and test fit the engine mount and got that hardware all test fit.

Feels good to really get some progress going.