So I finished the firewall. There were quite a few “puzzles” to complete in this one.

You will notice that I added an additional Spherical Grommet into the cable penetration parts to the firewall. This will actually house the throttle and mixture cables and the existing grommet will house the cowl-flap cable. The prop will come from the pilot side of the firewall.

I've attached a picture for those who are also going to be installing the IO-390-EXP119 which was introduced last year (specifically designed for the RV-14).

Here are some of the things I learned with the conclusion of this section.

1) Stainless steel rivets are VERY hard to set and even if you set it perfectly straight, the shop head of the rivet will not look as nice as the aluminum rivets.

2) The left and right side vent assemblies ARE NOT mirror images. This is a very good “gotcha” moment that luckily I avoided thanks to the very specific directions from Van's.

3) If you are now an expert at back rivets before this section, you will be after. Even when I was assembling the vents (stainless steel rivets) I found it necessary to back rivet.

4) The bottom flange of the battery box interferes with the bottom row while countersinking and whole riveting. This could have been avoided if the holes were moved up 1/8”. There is plenty of room for this. I sent a note to Van's to have their engineers consider it. Since it was pre-punched, this was not an option for me. I ordered a 7” long off set flush set for my rivet gun. You could also do this by back riveting these by holding the bucking bar firmly while having a friend back rivet the shop head, but that is not an ideal situation and I did not want to risk having to drill those out so I ordered the new set from Aircraft Spruce ($25).

5) When you are doing the bottoms skins, you can move the firewall assembly in many different configurations and still find it easy to secure and quite stable.

Now I need to rearrange my garage to prepare for the next section.