The Pedal Gee Bee

Time Spent: 4 hours (est.)
Total Time: 22.25

Looking at the plans it’s tough to see how the fuselage clamp actually clamps the fuselage. I looked at the plans for months (prior to construction) trying to figure it out. In fact, even after building the two pieces I couldn’t see how the actual clamping worked. I understood how the fuse sat in it, but thought the top piece of the clamp rested on top of the fuselage sides. The plans called for a “lag screw” to hold the clamp together. I thought “Lag screw? Where the heck am I going to find a 13 inch lag screw?” So I improvised, got some threaded rod and was going to use that. Then, as I was clamping it all up, it dawned on me. The clamp actually sits inside the two fuselage sides and on top of the internal doublers where the seat is. DUH! I did have to trim the top part of the clamp to achieve this, but once I did the clamp works great.

The assembly of the backrest / headrest base / headrest assembly is not well described in the text. After looking at the beveled cuts on the headrest base I was unsure exactly how the parts were supposed to mate up. After trying it a couple of different ways with the fuse in the clamp, I figured it out. I then glued and clamped the backrest to the headrest base. Once that had dried, I attached the headrest to it and viola! It fit perfectly, and the overlap of the headrest on the fuselage side was almost perfect. I then liberally glued the entire assembly inside the fuselage dados and clamped with a couple of bar clamps.