A removable front deck is a necessity, in my mind, and it's so easy to do during initial construction, there's no reason not to do it (unless the half a pound of flox and hinges is prohibitively heavy...and it ain't!). I show one way to do it at http://www.n56ml.com/kmlfd.html and I did the same for the aft deck at http://www.n56ml.com/kad.html. Risky? Both have been tested for 1130 hours, and at 245mph top speed, if that'll work for you. Oh, and with a 245 pound Corvair engine hanging off the firewall.
Imagine trying to access your brake cylinders. First step is to climb into the KR and lay down across the seat. Impossible? Yes, so you'll have to lay across the seat with your butt up on the longeron and feet dangling over the wing, while you finagle your shoulder through the 6" slot formed between the panel and main spar. But your shoulder is all that fits...your body prevents you from reaching any further. Now reach way out with your hand, and you STILL can't reach the pedals or the cylinders, much less get TWO arms in there to remove any bolts. So whatever you do, have to be one handed, which doesn't work, since you can't reach anything anyway. Next step, remove the instrument panel! You did make all of your electrical connections "connectorized", right? No? Then start disconnecting the battery and all of your switches! Oh, panel won't come out because of throttle, mixture, carb heat connections? Disconnect those from the engine and pull them loose so the panel will come out. You can quickly see that a removable front deck is simply a necessity, not a convenience. And after all that invasive surgery to your vital controls and electrical connections, you may have compromised flight safety in the process, just to access a brake cylinder. One of my POS brake cylinders leaks down after holding my foot on the brake for more than about five seconds, and then I have no brakes on the left side. I'd love to fix it so my brakes don't go away while landing, but I simply can't get there! And bleeding brakes is not uncommon (leaks so happen), so unless you have a remote reservoir on the firewall, how do you refill them? With a removable front deck (or at least a large access panel), modifying or troubleshooting the instrument panel is a breeze. If you can't get these critical items, you're going to let things slide and further compromise flight safety. Just my 2 cents worth, based on experience with a KR2 that was built to the plans...no removable deck, and a fuel tank between the panel and the firewall (bad idea!). I could go on, trust me, but I'm short on time, since I really need to get out to the airport and tear my instrument panel out to replace an IEFIS system that is simply not up to the job. For more opinions regarding KR building, see http://www.n56ml.com/kopinion.html ... Mark Langford, Harvest, AL ML "at" N56ML.com www.N56ML.com
