About to cover the Fuselage !

[Champ Dreamer]

Greetings,

My IA buddy stopped by Saturday and signed off my fuselage for covering. (HOORAY!) I am impatiently awaiting the arrival of a headliner from Airtex. As soon as I get that installed, I am ready to cover. I would appreciate any last minute advice, warnings, tricks or prayers before applying the fabric to the fuselage. I am using the Polyfiber system, and am familiar with it, having covered the wings last year. What I am looking for is any advice such as sequencing, traps, shortcuts and the like.
I have a 2 piece envelope.

Thanks a million,

Brian Walker '46 7AC NC1197E

[jepropst]

Bill Pancake worked with me on my first Champ rebuild last year so I'll pass along a couple items that I learned from Bill. First, when the plane was ready for recovering, Bill insisted that I totally assemble and rig it before recovering it. I first viewed this as another step to put me farther behind but learned otherwise. This step is needed to assure that there will be no interference problems with any of the rigging and that all the fuel line plumbing, brakes, etc. will work. In hind sight I'm glad I took the time to do this.

The second item is related to the rear windows. Originally at the factory the rear windows were installed in conjunction with the installation of the fuselage fabric. The fabric was installed to the window frame, the window was installed and a 2" tape was then installed over and cemented to the window (making the fabric to window watertight). This means that the rear windows are installed before painting and requires extra work to mask the windows. Having said this, I have seen many aircraft in which the rear windows were installed after the aircraft is painted and the metal trim strip is placed over the gap.

On last thing - I made a fixture for the tail end of the fuselage so that I could rotate the fuselage as I painted it. For the front end of the airframe I used four 2 X 4 legs as suggested in the Polyfiber manual. As the covering progressed, I found the plane got heavier and heavier and it was not easy to rotate the airframe by myself. If I did it again, I'd fabricate a second rotating fixture for the front end of the plane to eliminate lifting and also to permit rotating the aircraft to any position.

[RRHaldeman]

I just finished recovering a 7AC with the Polyfiber system. When I bought the aircraft, as noted in an earlier post, the fabric was TO the window sill but had pulled loose over the years. I decided to make sure I had a really good strong bond and decided to wrap the fabric over and around the wood window sill as well. The aircraft is at the paint shop now and we will paint the fabric covered window sill with the exterior paint. That solved two issues: A solid and strong bond for the fabric and wood that was OK but looked bad.

As for taping, remember to always lay out your tapes from rear to front so that the front tape covers the back tape.

[Champ Dreamer]

Done ! Finished the final coat of paint yesterday. Thanks for the advice. I was a bit disappointed with the section on fuselage covering in the polyfiber manual. The wing description was great, lottsa detail. My fuselage turned out well. I was convinced that there was no way I could get it to shrink enough. Spent about an hour shrinking each wing; took 4 1/2 hours to get the fusealge shrunk. The envelope left a lot to be desired, but it is (miraculously) tight as a drum now.
If I had it to do over again, I would do things a bit differently. One of the biggest problems I had was getting masking tape to stick to the areas that had polybrush on them. I guess the adhesives don't like vinyl. Got it all done just in time, we had 75 degree days this weekend, tomorrow; snow. The next warm weekend will be at least six months from now.

Brian Walker
'46 7AC (conv. DC) NC1197E