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Rebuilding My Firebolt

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Jwilsonphoto

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Most of you are familiar with my Firebolt gear trevails. Finally after a couple of years of research, being in denial about what I had to do, that fix is behind me. Nothing in homebuilding is simple and rebuilding is no different, maybe worse. My dilemma has been, how far down do I want to take the fuselage before actually beginning to go back together. I keep taking it just a little further south each session thinking I'll get to a point where I can stop, but it doesn't seem to be happening. As of today I have pulled everything out of the fuselage that isn't welded, all the way to the back of the rear cockpit. Now I'm trying to decide whether to Scotchbrite the gloss off all the tubing and shoot another coat of gloss white poly, or blast it back down to bare metal, prime it and shoot it white.
I'm at the point where I keep realizing all the things that need to be done and it's a bit overwhelming. Now that the fuselage has the standard gear on it, I am going to have to install some additional belly formers so I can build and attach the aluminum belly fairings around the Steen style gear. Yesterday I ended up pulling out all the wiring, rear instrument panel, etc. It's literally tubing from the baggage compartment forward so now is the time to do whatever I'm going to do. 
I'll post some photographs in the coming weeks just in case any of our members are facing the same dilemmas. I never wanted to have it back down this far, but it is what it is, so I want to make the most of it.
 

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