Drat and double drat!

After my earlier post, I did indeed slip out and get cracking on the padding and doors and my aim was to get the left side done today and the right side tomorrow.

I got everything off that I needed to pretty quickly and the first thing I found was that it wouldn’t be possible to slide the new rubber tubing onto the fuselage tubes after all. The internal diameter of the tubing is just too close to the tube diameter. You’d never be able to slide a whole metre length on, but it wasn’t hard slitting one side down with a large pair of sharp scissors and it looked OK when fitted.

Anyway, I got it cable-tied into place and then lined the door up. The left hand door has always been low at the front and high at the rear so I decided to be bold and as I am making up complete new hinge plates anyway, trim the lower edge of the screen back as it is quite a bit proud of the back edge of the pod. Then I drilled the new hinge plates and fitted the door. Result – pretty good. It was now much more level than before and the new hinge looked very neat and strong. Only one problem – as before, the bottom of the door tended to catch the edge of the screen when you opened and closed it.

So I pulled and pushed to get the amount of movement I needed for it to clear, and it just about did so. So, clever me, I decided to give the bottom a last yank over my knee – and snapped it at a rivet hole 😕

Suffering cats, the job’s done and now I’ve knackered the door tube. Now I’ll have to order a replacement from P & M and I hope to goodness it doesn’t come pre-drilled for pop rivets because if it does, you can bet the holes won’t line up with the ones drilled through the new door plastic for the old tube. So I end up solving one problem and creating another. I’m cheesed off to say the least 😯

And do you know what? The new padding didn’t make that much difference to the space in the cabin anyway…