I’d been having sleepless nights thinking about how I’d cover the cockpit…. paint, powdercoat, carpet, adhesive film… The choice was unending and all had their advantages and disadvantages as well as options.

Equally they dictated when and how I fitted panels. If I powder coat and need to trim a panel slightly.. what if I scratch them fitting them. What about the additional thickness. Do I go bare rivets with painted panels (looks IMO awesome but a royal pain to do).

I eventually came to the decision of “fuck it”, I was either going to paint over the lot or cover the lot. I love the look of bare aluminium rivets on black panels but a *lot* of grief and that could go wrong and make it look terrible.

So with that decision made it was on with attaching some panels!

Rear bulkhead panel:

Top not riveted yet as the upper bulkhead “folds over” and overlaps onto the bottom.

Right hand side (with gearchange linkage cover in place):

Note I haven’t cut the hole in the top for the gear lever yet! 

Upper row of rivets aren’t yet fitted just because I haven’t yet fitted them, they’re 4.8mm against 4mm for the rest because they’re countersunk and 4.8mm are the smallest countersunk rivets I could find. They’re countersunk because there is a rounded edge trim piece to go over the sharp corner edge there (for IVA etc) and without flush rivets the trim wouldn’t sit flush.

Left hand side:

Incidentally I found a *lot* of rivets were “out of spec” and oversize. I ended up “dumping” a whole load as I was fitting them, if they wouldn’t fit I’d throw them and pick another one. You can see how many “unused” ones along with the discarded shanks there are on the floor. I’ll probably still use them but for the holes that ended up a little larger than intended but next time I’ll be checking them for size first as it was a royal pain trying to fit them and having sometimes to try 2 or 3 before they’d fit. Plus all the sealant that got over them.

Anyway, then moved on to the gearchange linkage cover, fitted a piece of right angle at the top to the sill side, drilled the two panels to attach them together and then fitted into place. Drilled the top to the right angle (4mm at the moment, I’ll enlarge and fit riv-nuts later). Then I fitted two pieces of right angle to the floor “behind” the panel (one either side of the seat mounting flat bar) and then one in front so that it is positively located.

I had to cut down the one in front as it slots in at an angle to clear the seatbelt mount.