A moment I have been waiting for for a long time... final rivetting of the slider bubble to the canopy frame.
Final install of the canopy with cleco's and verifying the alignment of the slider with the windscreen. I installed additional nylon spacers under the rollbar and the gap which was there before is now neglectable. What remains will be easily covered by the fibreglass fairing.
Another view from the back side.The windscreen sits still slightly lower on the center but no issue to fill that with some extra fibreglass cloth.
Overall a good fit on the intersection and also a nice alignment with the forward top skin. This took a lot of sweat and way too long timewise to get it the way it's in this picture.
Started by rivetting the reinforcement brace to the side skirts using the pneumatic squeezer. Rivetting them on finally defines the curvature on the side skirt.
Then started pulling pop rivets on the top row, fixing the reinforcement cover strip to the bubble and frame. Fortunatly I did not need any washers between the bubble and frame so it made this a walk in the parc.
Top row, all done.
Then continued from the top down alternating sides while pulling rivets.
As last I pulled the back side rivets but only did half of them. The other half will be used to make the custom made fibreglass rear skirt fit the canopy shape. It will be easier to hold it in place when I will sikaflex the rear skirt onto the canopy.
One the skirt is glued to the canopy, I will set the remaining rivets and cover the holes up with thickened epoxy resin.
