Monthly Archives: October 2018

My long battle with the Cabin Top is coming to a close, at least for the interior. Various choices made the task harder than it should be, but the end result is now in sight, and I’m happy with how it’s turning out.

Including A/C in this aircraft meant an overhead console would be needed, so I bought the Aerosport Products carbon fiber overhead console. I wanted wiring conduits up each front pillar to make wiring easier, so that brought about a whole load of work to glass these in and finish the pillars appropriately. I’m installing Visors so that requires mounting points, but Van’s have taken the position that holes should not be drilled in the front pillars because the holes have an unknown impact on the rollover protection, so I made up some metal inserts with Nyloc nutplates and glassed them in.

I bought the Aerosport cabin headliner kit, but the headliners were compromised during shipment. I could have repaired the problems, but overall I decided against using a headliner, which meant that I had to finish the entire cabin top interior. This amounts to a lot of work, because the Cabin Top as it comes from Van’s is quite rough, and there are a lot of complex shapes and curves involved, especially after glue-ing in the overhead console. The headliner would not have helped much either, the hardest parts are outside of the area that a headliner would encompass.

I decided to keep the Carbon Fiber look for the overhead console, this added yet another layer of complexity because it had to be masked off while the rest of the interior was painted, and masking off the line between the interior paint and the overhead console is difficult because of the afore-mentioned complex shapes.

Previous choices had an impact as well. Some time ago I chose to use the McMaster Carr door seal, so as described in previous posts I used a length of seal as a mould and built up the door frame to a constant 1/4″ width all the way around. When you do this, there is a “jag” on the inside of the seal which winds up making a nice groove on the interior side of the door edge. This is a good thing, because when you put the “real” seal in place, the seal jag slots into this groove and helps to hold it in place. While spraying fill primer, I didn’t want this groove to fill with with primer and disappear, so I had to tape off to just beyond the small groove around all the door frames. I removed this tape before spraying the primer and topcoat.

If you’re building an RV-10 and want to minimise the work on the cabin top interior, then don’t do any of the things I’ve done. Otherwise, here is the entire process I’ve used:

1. Fit the cabin top etc., and create the door gap for the McMaster seal (see previous post)
2. Fit the overhead console, and glue it in. I used Lord adhesive for this (see previous post).
3. Fit the wiring conduits to the front struts, and glass them in with 3 layers of glass. See previous post for details on how I used a Nylon 3D printed part to transition into the overhead. I used straight epoxy, blackened with die, to seal the Nylon transition pieces into the overhead. The same technique was used to seal around the (black Aerosport) door strut brackets.
4. Make metal inserts with Nyloc nutplates for the visors. Position these so that the visors just miss the overhead console when (unextended and) pushed to the front. Glass these inserts in at the same time as step (3) above. Triple check their position with the real visors before doing so!
5. Apply filler (epoxy + micro-balloons + cabosil) to the front pillars to create the desired shape around the conduits, and transition into the visor mount points which must be kept flat.
6. I didn’t like the amount of material left on the cabin top roof after the front seat belt mounting bolts were countersunk, so I added three layers of glass around these points to create a slight “bulge”. I added filler around this “bulge” to transition smoothly back into the cabin top.
7. Apply filler everywhere else around the interior, and to transition from the overhead console back into the interior. This took several iterations to get right, so fill, sand, fill, sand, fill, sand ….
8. I cleaned everything off with wax and grease remover, and scuffed the overhead console to prepare it for later clear coat, with a 600 grit wet sand. Then I cleaned everything off again and taped up the overhead, and fussed over the edge that I was going to tape to. This edge I made about 1/4″ back from the corner of the overhead – it’s really impossible to tape a straight line on the corner when you have to go around bends in three dimensions.
9. After cleaning off again, I applied a thin glaze of straight epoxy over the “flat” parts of the cabin top, i.e. the parts where I could use a squeegee. This was to fill pin holes. Around the curves and steps, I didn’t do anything in particular for pin holes at this point.
10. I rolled on a coat of Wattyl UC-230 primer-surfacer, let it dry, and sanded it back. I wouldn’t bother with this step again, I was still left with a zillion pin holes and it’s much more effective to just spray it on.
11. Without bothering about pin holes, I sprayed on a second coat of UC-230, using a cheap gun I bought for priming that had a 1.8mm nozzle. Once this dried, I sanded it back. The result was a zillion pin holes, a lot of small low spots where further sand/surfacer operations were required to render the interior flat, and a few larger low spots that required a bit more filling.
12. I filled the few “larger” low spots as required, and applied Ever-coat 440 express pinhole filler. Be careful if you use this product, it is highly toxic. After this, another coat of UC-230 and sand it back.
13. I repeated the process – spray on UC-230, sand it back, fill pinholes – about another three times. Each time I probably sanded 80% of the material off – but never back to the previous layer – and got down to the point where (a) I couldn’t find any more pinholes, and (b) when I sanded it back, there were no “low spots” left. It’s easy to see the low spots, they remain shiny in reflected light while the material you’re sanding doesn’t.
14. Once I was happy with all the surfacing, I sanded the surfacer down to the level of the tape along the transition line to the carbon fiber console, removed all the tape, and then carefully sanded the edge down further, leaving a very slight rise where the surfacer began (180 grit for this sanding). I used a sharp knife to scrape away surfacer in a few tiny places where it had crept under the tape. I removed the electrical tape around the door surrounds (to stop surfacer filling up the groove for the seal jag). Then I cleaned everything up with wax and grease remover, and finally with alcohol.
15. I re-taped the centre console, putting down a careful line with 3M vinyl tape, just “inside” the edge of the UC-230. I fussed over this taping a lot, because the next step – polyurethane primer – is much thinner paint and will creep under a bad taping job. Moreover, it will stick to just about anything and be impossible to get off. I left the door surrounds un-taped.
16. I sprayed PPG polyurethane primer, two coats. One in the evening, one the following morning. Drying time is 4 hours. It was a perfect day outside, so I decided to spray the top coat in the afternoon. For this I used my better quality spray gun, with a 1.2mm nozzle.
17. I sprayed two coats of PPG polyurethane topcoat, 1.5 hours apart. The 1.5 hours is just to allow the first coat to flash off. After each of the PPG primer operations and each topcoat, I rushed the cabin top back inside the garage (which is closed up) and threw a drop cloth over the whole thing to try and reduce dust, since I don’t have booth that I could fit the cabin top in.
18. Drying time for the topcoat is 12 hours, full cure in a week. Seven hours after the second coat, I carefully pulled up the vinyl tape. A sharp knife and tweezers helps, and it’s important to avoid dropping any “shards” of paint from the vinyl tape (which it doesn’t adhere to) back onto the topcoat – it’ll stick.
19. After the topcoat had cured overnight, I removed the rest of the masking on the overhead.

Unavoidably, a few small bugs landed on the topcoat and suffered a cruel death. I waited two days so that the topcoat had hardened up, and used a very sharp/pointy knife to remove the remains. I think I did this in 4 places, fortunately they were all very tiny bugs. These, and a few dust spots, will clean up OK when I cut and polish the topcoat. I’m not going to do this until after the topcoat has fully cured.

The next job is to spray clear-coat on the carbon fiber. I’m going to tape off the grey paint along the transition line, protect the rest of the interior with plastic etc., and spray the clear. I’m using a marine product called Durepox for this. I haven’t done it yet, so I’ll update this post once it is done. I did a little test piece and the chemistry between this and the PPG polyurethane seemed OK. I do expect to run into some pinholes in the carbon fiber, I can see them under a magnifier, so I’ll probably have to use a small brush to fill them, sand back, and do several coats of the clear before it is good enough to finish with 2000 grit wet and a buffing polish.

Once the clear is done, I’ll cut and polish the grey topcoat, glue the windows in with Lord adhesive, and the cabin top will finally be ready to fit to the fuselage for good. To finish the interior window transition, I plan to cut a rubber seal in half and cement it in place, as described in a Van’s Air Force post some time ago.

Of course, once the cabin top is on, I get to do a lot of this all over again, filling in around the lower door surrounds, filling and joining everything up with the existing finished paintwork, in theory so that it is not possible to see where the join is.