Darwin Berrie advised me a while back to lay out the oil cooler and other stuff on the firewall first, since you have some latitude to move other stuff to fit around them.

I ordered the RV10 firewall oil cooler mount but it still hasn't arrived, so I moved on to something else a few days ago. Specifically, I decided there was no reason not to jump into the instrument panel.

I had bought a really cool Aerosport carbon instrument panel used on VAF last year, but unfortunately, it doesn't look like it has enough free space to install the G5 where I want (left of the PFD) so I shelved it and went back to Vans simple flat panel blank.

I originally thought that my center stack would consist (top to bottom) of; autopilot controller, GTN650, Audio panel. But after measuring everything, I discovered that if I flipped the order and put the GTN on the bottom, I wouldn't have to cut the center rib behind the panel. Hopefully I won't regret moving it to the bottom. Time will tell.

I though that I'd make short work of this, but my air nibbler isn't up to cutting through the .063 instrument panel blank, so I went old school with a drill, dremmel, rotary file, hand files, etc. and slowly but surely it started to look like a panel.

The GTN is so deep that I needed to cut a hole in the sub panel for it to stick through. It was also questionable whether I could get the back shells on the audio panel without the wiring having to make an uncomfortably tight bend with the sub panel right behind it, so I bit the bullet and cut a hole in the sub panel the height/width of both units.

The last couple of days has been lots of trial fitting, trimming, fabricating mounting brackets, and engineering a way to beef up the sub panel to gain back the rigidity I lost.

I'm pretty happy with where it was as of this morning, but we've had a cold snap and I can't get the garage much above freezing, so I'm out for a day or two.

I still have to fabricate some supports for the back of the audio panel rack, but other than that, this is all pretty much ready to rivet together.