So by Sunday the pod was ready for final finishing. Here’s how it looked inside with all of the cloth patches that I’d added for strengthening and repairs.<\/p>\n
And here’s how it looked on the outside after I’d finished rubbing it down with very fine wet and dry to remove the old lettering.<\/p>\n The bottom still looked a bit of a mess though, as you can see from the next two pics.<\/p>\n In the above pic you can see how I’d repaired and re-shaped the hole for the front forks but what you can’t see is how I’d also added a lot of thickness and strengthening around it. Also visible are the repairs I did to the screw holes around the slots for the rudder pedal extensions. No matter how hard I tried, it was impossible to disguise these and I found in the end it was best to leave the gel coat filler a bit proud as every time I rubbed it right down flat the holes became visible again as black circles.<\/p>\n In fact the repairs to the pod bottom didn’t come out quite as badly as I’d first feared. The next pic shows the how the big split repairs came out.<\/p>\n And after a bit of buffing and polishing, even the nose section didn’t come out too badly either.<\/p>\n And it looks even better if you stand back a bit as shown in the next pic because, of course, nobody will ever see the bottom of the pod close up, unless I run over them that is \ud83d\ude15<\/p>\n Now one final shot of the pod taken from one side, after buffing and T-Cutting but before final finishing. As you can see, the old lettering came off pretty well really.<\/p>\n And now a shot from a similar angle after finishing. I went for a shade of grey for the inside that was lighter than the original as I think it will make the interior, which is a bit cramped at the best of times, a little bit more light and airy. I also cut the outside back again with the coloured T-Cut that you can get now – in this case dark red, of course. See what you think.<\/p>\n I’m quite pleased with the results, especially given the age and original condition of the pod and the fact that I’ve managed to avoid spraying it. The next pic shows the lighter shade of grey that I used for the interior.<\/p>\n And now to finish off, a shot of two of the smaller repairs that I showed right at the beginning, now completed. Although they are still a bit ‘bright’ at this stage, I’m confident that they will tone down and fade back to be closer to the colour of the surrounding old gel coat.<\/p>\n Now onto what for me was the best bit of the day. I dearly hoped that the weather would hold long enough into the evening for me to get the pod refitted to the fuselage frame and for once my wish was granted.<\/p>\n It was a bit tricky getting it on and with everything lined up so bolt holes matched bolt positions. Luckily just as I was lifting the pod up and wondering how I was going to support it while I tried to jiggle it into position, Steve, a neighbour, walked by and was quickly pressed into service. Things became slightly harder because by now I was beginning to tire at the end of a fairly long day but I’m glad to say that I got the pod refitted with minimal damage. I was also glad that the resculpturing work I’d done around the nose wheel hole and also the holes at the back (which I’d reduced in size and reshaped so they matched) went on perfectly without needing any adjustment of any kind.<\/p>\n Now one final shot showing the pod interior.<\/p>\n I’m very pleased with the new lighter interior colour and I also love the way the now shiny white pedals show up against it. But the very best thing of all is that this now means that I’m firmly into the rebuilding phase. I expect that it will not be without its problems but it’s great to know that from now on stuff is being stuck back on because everything that’s refitted means that I’m a little bit closer to the time when MYRO will be back flying again. And that just can’t come soon enough \ud83d\ude06<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" And one when for the first time for many weeks I managed to get everything done that I wanted to. Late on Friday afternoon I had been doing a bit more to the gel coat and had left the pod standing up on its end leaning against something. It was a bad mistake because the … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-508","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-main-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.micro-trike.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/508","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.micro-trike.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.micro-trike.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.micro-trike.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.micro-trike.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=508"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.micro-trike.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/508\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.micro-trike.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=508"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.micro-trike.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=508"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.micro-trike.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=508"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"null\"](\"http:\/\/micro-trike.co.uk\/images\/pod12.jpg\")
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