I prepped more parts for the side skin, side skin reinforcements, and the firewall install. The side skins went on pretty easy with minimal "encouragement" to get into position. The side skin reinforcement plates were a little more tricky and I found the order of the rivet install did matter. Luckily my step dad was in town and was a huge help in getting everything pushed into place and also riveted.
I pulled the old rudder cable and am still awaiting its replacement but I would rather find problems now and fix them. Some of the rudder cable guides are hard to get to as I installed them while a lot of the fuselage was not put together. Foot long drill bits came in very handy.
The firewall in also now on, it took some time because it ends up being a sandwich of 3 sheets of aluminum and 1 of steel. I had to work slow and install a cleco in every hole to help pull everything together. The parts were all dimpled individually, but I found it helpful to use my pneumatic squeezer with dimple dies and dimple the parts while they were all together.
After the firewall went on I checked my rudder pedals and unfortunately they were pretty hard to move. I assumed the floor had tweeked a little from the firewall going on. I started removing some rivets to adjust the pedals but I realized the stiffness wasn't coming from the pedal mounts but rather the matco brake cylinders. I had tightened the attachment bolts a little too much. After backing off the nuts just a little bit the rudder pedals started moving as they should. One good thing that came from this is that I noticed one of the top mount brackets that holds the pedals down was drilled incorrectly from the factory and wasnt supporting the way it was designed. I have a new part on order.
Lastly, the center fuselage center skin is on. I was waiting to do this because I didn't have access with the fuselage siting on the workbench. I had to slide the fuselage onto some work horses to get access.