Finish: Wheels assembled.

I put together the wheels.  It was a 3 hour affair for me as I had some learning to do.  After scouring my local grocery store for talcum powder and realizing that baby powder is composed of corn starch, I purchased Tire Talc from Spruce (that stuff makes a mess) as part of another bolus of parts I needed.  Update 16-Jan-16: If you look carefully, the main wheel in the left image below has the valve stem aligned with a pink dot (which looks red at night).  I had to disassemble and redo both main wheels to align with their red dots.

I did pay heed to the discussion on VAF about the nosewheel in the kit being the wrong size (Grove NW501.25 vs NW511.25), discovered by another builder who documents his build on his blog, specifically detailing the nosewheel issue on this page.  A terse summary of the issue is that for the wheel provided in the kit, the valve stem will have an extended protrusion, causing it hit to the fork.  The NW511.25 does not have that issue (below, right) and retains the use of the same tire and tube.  Matco allowed me to swap my unused NW501.25 for the NW511.25 for $21.49 plus nearly $20 shipping (though the box came with $3.25 postage due, so shipping was more than $23), putting the cost of the exchange at nearly $55 when the shipping for the old wheel is included.  A reasonable cost, in my opinion.

However, also in that discussion and blog post above is an outline on why one might want the Matco axle over the one provided in the kit by Van's.  In fact, a builder verbosely documented his thoughts on the axle here as it relates to the similarly equipped RV-10.  Summarily, the Van's axle and spacer (below, left) doesn't let you adjust the bearing preload independent of the load imposed by the fork.  This may lead to the parts rotating against the fork, causing undo wear manifesting in shimmy, indicating a wheel that isn't rigidly attached to the fork.  Whilst I'm no expert in this area (well, in any area really), I opted to use the axle and spacer provided by Matco (below, right) for the additional cost of $62.66 and $12.32, respectively.

As shipped, the whole changeover was $116.19 to Matco, plus the $3.25 postage due when delivered, plus $10.06 additional to ship the original nosewheel back to them.  So $129.50.  If one were to delete the parts NW501.25, two of  U-1023, and U-1009 from the finish kit in favor of NW511.25, WHLAXLE24 and WHLA24SPKIT from Matco, I'm sure the total cost of this change would be reduced significantly.

Finally, it's worth pointing out that the nosewheel lacks a grommet for the valve stem whilst the main wheel have the grommet.  I put in an email to Matco inquiring about this curious omission.  Their reply was "There is no grommet for the valve stem hole".