First off, as I expected, removing the stab bars on the tail bulkhead allows for the longerons to fully fit in place. Looking back over the instructions, I think I wasn’t supposed to have those clecoed in place at this point. Oh well, it was easy to remove them, and now the longerons lie nicely in place:
After this, I had to go back and replace all the clecos I removed to facilitate putting the longerons in place, which took a little bit of time. Next, I pulled out the center section bulkhead caps and the cockpit rails and proceeded to clean up all the edges, and then I clecoed those in place. Here’s the left cockpit rail:
The instructions say to slide the longerons until the forward bend line sits in the middle of the notch (visible above) in the cockpit rail. The left longeron is perfectly positioned, but on the right side, the bend line is located about 1/8” aft of the notch with the forward end of the longeron contacting the firewall. The aft bend line also appears to be located a bit further aft than desired, so fixing this issue should be as simple as removing a bit of material from the forward end of the longeron. The longerons have to be trimmed at the aft end eventually anyway (the first photo from today shows the overhang), so I’ve got the extra length to work with.
Still, I figured I’d sleep on it before extracting the longeron and actually cutting the thing. So instead I just did some random tinkering before calling it a night. I set the roll bar in place and cackled a bit, tried to figure out how the center weldment (which will support the front seat back) would attach, and dropped the aft baggage compartment floors in place just to visualize how things would come together. The aft baggage area is actually a fairly decent size:
Tomorrow night I’ve got an EAA chapter meeting, so I guess I’ll get back to work Friday…