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I applied the door seal on my IV after paint. I dry fit the seal then applied good quality masking tape to the paint on both sides of the seal. Then removed the seal leaving the tape as a guide. I then scuff sanded the clear coat between the tape outlines being careful not to damage the tape. Then applied the RTV in a bead in the center of the tape outlines and a film of RTV on the door seal. Then pressed the seal in place with the squeeze out ending up on the outline tape. I carefully removed the bulk of the squeezed out RTV. Then after several minutes to let the RTV to begin to set up I removed the tape. No RTV mess was left on the paint. The seal was installed more than three years ago and there have been no problems. This technique also works great to fill the wing faring gaps with RTV without messing up the paint.
David Standish
Dennis Johnson wrote:
Hi Micah,
I used blue masking tape to hold the inflatable canopy seal in place before gluing it. Since the seal is stretchy, if you're not careful, you can scrunch it up so that it is too short or stretch it so that it is too long. I kept removing the tape and putting it back on until I felt like I had the minimum distortion throughout the length of the seal.
Once I was happy with its placement, I removed the masking tape in a short section and pulled the seal away from the fuselage and applied the silicone adhesive that Lancair includes with the seal. Pressed the seal back into place and put new masking tape to hold it there. I repeated the process in short sections at a time until I was all the way around and back where I started. By the way, it had been over two years between buying the canopy seal (and the included silicone adhesive) and installing it. To be on the safe side, I bought a new, fresh, tube of silicone adhesive from Lancair. There doesn't seem to be much, if any, friction between the seal and the canopy when the canopy opens and closes, so I didn't put a huge amount of silicone adhesive on it. Silicone adhesive is hard to clean up without smearing it and making a mess, so I tried to get on just enough without a lot of squeeze out. I also protected the tube that sticks out of the canopy seal that attaches to the canopy pump because my glare shield sort of rubs on it. I was afraid that vibration would eventually rub a hole in the tube. After two years and 250 hours, everything is still fine. I turned down the pressure setting on the canopy seal air pump to its lowest setting, probably less than 5 psi. That's enough to effectively seal and more pressure was lifting the canopy away from the fuselage. You might want to experiment with that in the hangar. I can't see any benefit of more pressure than you need.
Good luck,
Dennis
Legacy
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