Door Threshold Paint, Right Door Interior, Interior Panel Outfitting, Door Handles, and Illuminated Switch Test

Today was a very productive day. I was able to get the rest of the final top coat paint onto the door threshold. Of course it was today that I FINALLY learned how to use my HVLP paint gun. Up to now I had been progressively getting better but would vary between a slightly textured surface that would need sanding to smooth or a coat with sags and runs.

I came across this article on using a HVLP paint gun. In short, I needed to vastly close my fluid knob – only open 2.5 turns, increase air pressure to max for the gun (100 psi) and then twist the fan control to the proper size. Then fine-tune the drop size with the fluid control. I had been running with a much lower pressure (70 PSI) and my fluid knob almost full open (per the Sharpe Finex 3000 manual). It worked, but wasn’t perfect. With these settings, my paint coats had no runs, were silky smooth and required almost no post paint sanding for finish. Wow, I wish I had learned this sooner.

So with the new settings, the door threshold paint coats went on perfectly and I didnt get any runs and it is near flawless. I left the drop cloth in place until the paint cured during the day.

I moved onto the right door interior and shot it with two final coats – again the paint laid very nicely and “flowed” as it should. I also shot the two small caps that will covered the interior access hole for the locks – eventually.

I prepped the Aerosport Products door handle parts for painting – sanded lightly and then cleaned with isopropyl alcohol. Some of the pieces were small and light weight so I used my pin head board and epoxied them in place to paint.

I also looked at my screw cap “buttons” I had previously painted. I dont think there is proper adhesion with the paint as a few I picked up I slightly pressed and the paint came off in large chunks. So I am going to have to get more aggresive with sanding them and reshoot them all with paint and try again.

I installed the map pocket and cup holders in each of the pilot and co-pilot interior panels. Tricia is quite pleased with the cup holder – it is adjustable and should easily accomodate her travel coffee mug or a bottle of water. It does a great job folding up out of the way when not in use too. I did make one small change to the how the cup holder is mounted. They use some 1/2″ wood screws with some very sharp points on the screws. The instructions even say to make sure no wires are nearby. Rather than risk it, I took the screws and ground them down on the grinder and got rid of the sharp point as this mount did really require them.

I moved back to the right door which had dried quickly – perhaps the weather, perhaps the new paint process I am using? I removed the tape off the center latch and found I needed to sand it a little to restore the polish and remove some accidentle paint/primer that had gottent to it. I still want to find a “collar” that will cover the door to the center latch to cover up the ugly fiberglass/paint area there.

I test fitted the AeroSport Products door handle cover and found that it still sat a little high in the pocket. So I decided I would mount it upside down so it better masks the handle pocket. So I reinstalled the stock door handle (with my patent pending red “button”) – boy it was just as hard to get it installed as it was months ago when I first assembled all this. I laid out the door handle cover parts and drilled and screwed them in place. Man, these door covers make such a different. the stock door handle is quite ugly and feels “experimental”, but these new handles are production quality. Quite nice!

I moved onto the door pin guides. I had these masked off for painting so I carefully removed the tape. The lines were nicely maintained. I will need to come back and do some more sanding when the paint is better cured to smooth out the transition from paint to plastic. I also had to clean up the pins themselves as well as the guide holes as some epoxy and primer had gotten in during the door work prior to painting.

I also got a chance to do an experiment with the RockRack switches from Aveo. The stock setup has a single LED light that can be used to illuminate the switch, but there is no light indicator to indicate when the switch is on or off. OR you can use the light to show when the switch is on, but not illuminate the label. So you would need a panel light to see the switches. So I found that Aircraft Spruce was selling some of the dual LED light switches that are made by the manufacturer of the switches – APEM KR Switches. So I ordered up a dual LED switch and wired it up. I was able to use one of the lights to have the icon/label illuminated all the time (can control through a dimmer for day time/night time control) and also wire up the second light so that it illuminates only when the switch is pressed on. So this will work perfectly for my switch needs. It only takes a small set of jumper wires on the back to make it work like this.

At the end of the day, the door threshold were nicely dried, so I removed the drop cloth to see the fruits of all that labor. I still need to go through and do a thorough vacuum job from all the stray dust the drop cloths didnt catch during sanding. I also couldnt resist placing the co-pilot interior panel in to examine the glove light fit as it transitions to the door post and to show Tricia her new map pocket/cup holder for future use. I am VERY pleased with how these panels transition to the airframe.