With the super tracks mod, The canopy slides far enough aft that I could have installed the internal canopy braces without removing the canopy. The inside of the skirts had already been painted white in that area with a simple application of dupli-color rattle can white with that in mind. Unfortunately, you could see the sika squeeze out and a couple of areas where there was sika primer showing through the lightening holes along that lower edge. I decided I didn't want to spend every flight looking at those globs through the lightening holes, so last night I pulled the canopy, flipped it over on a well padded shop bench, and cut/sanded off the globs. Sika says that their stuff can be painted, and it's almost impossible to get the dried primer off without using aggressive "mechanical means" so I wasn't concerned about getting it all removed, just sanded to a cosmetically appealing profile so I could apply touchup paint. I was afraid to use acetone that close to the plexiglass so after sanding the surface smooth, I wiped everything down with denatured alcohol. Either residue from that, or perhaps something in the sika primer, didn't agree with my rattle can krylon, because both sides popped up with worm tracks in several places. I thought that maybe I just hadn't cleaned the surface well enough, so once it dried, I removed the crackled paint with a combination of sanding and scrubbing with scotchbright. then again scrubbed everything with alcohol. Darned if the same thing didn't happen again! On round 3, I started with a light coat of duplicolor primer to seal the sika primer then top coated with krylon rattle can semi-gloss white and it finally came out nice. The fiberglass skirt is so stiff I didn't see how it could have shifted so I decided to just go ahead and rivet on the canopy braces with this upside down and off the airplane. I first riveted the braces to the frame, then back drilled through the braces to the skirt for the lower rivets. I then countersunk and installed the rivets with a squeezer. Prior to installing the skirt braces, the skirt fit was so good along the sides that I couldn't slide a piece of paper in the gap. The gap across the aft fuselage deck had started out the same, but after bonding it together last week I ended up with a gap back there of about 1/16". I attribute this to my applying the sika too thickly back there and not really having a way to pull it down and force more squeezout the way the clecoes did along both sides. In retrospect, I think if I had wrapped a ratchet strap around the fuselage back there and cinched it down, I could have gotten this tighter in that area. At any rate, I was gratified to see that once I had the skirt braces riveted on and the canopy re-installed, the fit hadn't changed a bit. The gap along the back isn't a big deal, it's symmetrical side to side so it looks like it should be there, and it's just about a perfect width for a piece of light weatherstripping/anti-chafe which will create a better draft seal that a tighter (but not airtight) fit of fiberglass laying against fuselage skin. If you look at the pictures below, you can see that the upper rivet line still has copper clecos installed. I'm on the fence about whether to install rivets in this holes or just fill them in with epoxy. The Sika will hold that skirt on for eternity, but on the other hand, it's not like it's a lot of work to countersink and install some pop rivets. I can't really see a downside to it other than potentially teh paint popping off the rivet heads years on down the road. I'm going to sleep on it and make a decision on that in a day or two. The only other thing I'm thinking about is whether to add a pull handle in the aft center of the canopy. I added a pull tab on the right rear corner when I was putting this all together, but it turns out that when you pull on it, it pulls the canopy sideways and binds it up a bit. It's pretty hard to get the canopy open by pulling just on that one corner and I think it would be cake if I could pull and lift from the aft center. I've looked at this on VAF and several guys have installed a chrome cabinet pull back there and it turned out really nicely. If I can figure out how to do this without running the risk of cracking the canopy I think I might go that route.