Tools and Options

[jiott]

I made an extended baggage compartment by installing a lightweight (1/8" ply) floor behind the standard compartment, and then had my wife sew in a zipper on a portion of the rear fabric panel of the standard factory baggage sack. If I have long, lightweight cargo, I just unzip that panel and lay the item thru it. No fancy heavy duty floor or sides needed back there for obvious reasons.

[Fdxflier]

Jim,
Since I don't have my kit yet I am in the dark about a lot of items and am reviewing various options. The options list show a Cabin Baggage Kit ($525) and an Extended Baggage Kit ($650). What is in the standard aircraft kit? Your mod sounds like a pretty easy change and a whole lot less expensive! Thanks.
Bill

[jiott]

The standard kit does not include any baggage kit. I used the standard cabin baggage kit option and modified it with a zipper as described earlier.

[Shadowrider]

Cabin air vents are an option. They also sell a stainless trim piece to protect the paint/fabric as you enter the cabin.

[Meyer]

Along these lines, what are the most common things people run out of while building? Chemicals, rivets? As I understand it the kit comes with everything along those lines. Just curious if there is a top ten of things people tend to need extra of. My kit ships in January and I want to get everything on the truck that I can think of.

[ken nougaret]

Its not much, but what i remember always running out of was popsickle sticks for mixing. I would say get a few hundred.

[jiott]

I kept running out of denatured alcohol for cleaning; was buying it by the quart; should have bought gallons. By the way, it cleans mixing sticks easy.
Needed a 2nd 2-quart kit of Hysol, and lots of cheap plastic syringes.
Needed a 2nd quart of PolyTak, but don't buy it until you need it-it thickens on the shelf.
Bought extra clecos, both sizes, so I had 50 each.
Its pretty hard to have too many spring clamps and bar clamps.
Buy a whole box of maroon Scotchbrite; you will use lots.
I ended up using 2 kits of SuperFill.

[David47]

I bought MEK and Acetone - definitely needed - or Isopropyl alcohol or similar as solvents for general cleanup and dilution.

In line with Jim's comments, and assuming you're using polyfibre as the covering, I needed the following as additional to what was included in the kit:

1 Qt Polytak
1 Gal of Polybrush
4 Gal of Polyspray - there was no polyspray in my kit
Maroon scotchbrite - buy a carton of 20 sheets
Truckload of perseverance

Good luck.

[Esser]

Like has been said, buy alcohol a gallon at a time.

I didn’t use popsical sticks I found them too weak. I used strong handled butter knives that I bought a pack of 4 from a large grocery store. Easy to clean up. The odd time I forgot to clean them up perfectly, I’d put them on my belt sander for a second.

I would suggest getting a AN bolt kit. I bought lots of short AN bolts for mounting things to the firewall or to adel clamps etc. Actually get 10X 1/2” adel and 10X 5/8”.

My mileage might be different than others as my firewall forward install wasn’t standard. But I feel even things like mounting your ELT require adel clamps that don’t come with the kit.

[aviator79]

Hardware is super-cheap from Aircraft Spruce: so cheap that it's hardly worth paying to ship it, so always buy more than you need. The kit comes pretty complete, but you're going to drop some nuts and washers that will vaporize when they hit the floor. Washers are like $0.02 and nuts are maybe $0.10 each, so it's not worth my time to spend 15 minutes on my hands and knees looking for them. Also, they say that since you shouldn't re-use elastic stop nuts, that you should install things temporarily with standard nuts. To me, this is just an opportunity to forget and leave the wrong nut on there. The elastic nuts are cheap. If you remove it, toss it and install a fresh one. Of course that means you'll need a bunch of extra. With that in mind, I'd get a bunch of the following:

AN364-1032 nuts - You'll use these for Adel clamps too, so get a bunch.
AN365-1032 nuts
AN960-10 and -10L washers
AN3-4A bolts (for your adel clamps)
Assortment of other AN3 bolts. Get a kit, or just buy a bunch in different lengths. Again, only about 10 or 15 cents each, and you're not going to want to pay $3 and wait 3 days to ship less than a $1 worth of hardware each time you need it. You want these on hand.

For the nuts and washers, just get like 100. Maybe a simliar number of AN3-4A bolts, and then several lengths of AN3 bolt in quantities of 10 or 20. I imagine for $50-$75, you could put together a better hardware kit than the kits spruce sells.

I'll also second what everyone else has said, it's all good advice. I've had good luck with popsicle sticks from Amazon. Too cheap to bother cleaning them. Also on Amazon: wax-less paper cups for mixing adhesives and filler. They also have good 16 oz paint mixing cups that are nice when you get to covering and spraying.