(9-14 step 2):
Continuing on with the left elevator this morning, the first
thing I did was attach the rear flange of the inboard root rib to the
rear spar. After that it was time to peel the skin back and sneak
the squeezer yoke inside to squeeze the 2 gusset rivets. One of
these was a little difficult to get in the hole but I eventually
"convinced" it. Also, Van's calls for -4 rivets here, but these
were way short. I went with -5's and they were just right.
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(9-14 step 4): Here's
a case for making sure your flanges are 90 degrees to the web… I
attached the tip rib to the elevator and noticed the skins had a slight
curve up toards the tip. Checking a bit closer it was apparent
the inboard and outboard tip ribs weren't exactly 90 degrees when the
tip rib skins were riveted on. The first pic shows the tip ribs
when I first installed them. Notice the slight curve up. I
removed the rib & tried to straighten the bends a bit, although I
could only do so much since the tip ribs are all riveted together
now. The second pic shows the result of my attempt... a little
better, but its still noticable.
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(9-14 step 5):
The next step was to pull the skin back and rivet the tip rib
assembly to the front spar. Again this was a tight, akward
fit. I initially thought I could use the squeezer, but it simply
wouldn't fit, and if it did it would gall a lot of aluminum up.
So, I busted out the rivet gun and bucked 'em. The rivets along
the web of the front spar required the offset rivet set. The ones
on the end flange of the front spar could be done with the straight
set. All of them required a mirror in order to see if they were
set correctly. Well, as you can see here, one of them was set a
little too much! Gotta drill that one out...
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(9-14 step 6):
The last thing to do in order to close this guy up was to rivet
the last bit of skins down. This was mostly easy, however there
were a couple of places where the skins attach to the tip ribs that
were slightly challenging. Two rivets on both the top and bottom
skins aren't accessible from the outside so they can't be
squeezed. So, once again I had to reach inside with the bucking
bar. You can only do this to one skin since you're reaching in
from the opposite side. Once you rivet the first skin in place
there's no way to reach inside for the second skin. Therefore
these two holes are filled with pop rivets on the second skin.
The plans reccommend bucking the top rivets for cosmetic reasons.
That way you can have the pop rivets on the bottom. Anyway, other
than that the remaining rivets were prettey straight forward. One
thing... I would like to put a plug in here for an adjustable set
holder if you're using a pneumatic squeezer... I can't tell you how
many different times I've had to adjust for different length
rivets. If I had to pull the thing out and adjust the number of
washers... jeez... its takes long enough as it is. I don't even
want to think how much longer it would take. Once you bite the
bullet and get one, you soon realize why they cost so much! A
recommendation... if it's close to OSH or Sun-N-Fun or something like
that, wait and get it then. We picked ours up at about a 25%
discount.
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(9-15 step 7): The
next thing I did was adjust the cover plates a bit to try and get them
flat. The dimpling caused them to warp a bit. Once
satisfied with them I attached the trim cable attachment brackets to
the cover plates. I used AD4-5 rivets here.
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(9-17 step 8): Next
up was putting a slight bend in the leading edge of the top skin so
that it'll lay flat against the bottom one when they are rolled and
closed. After that I was looking for something else I could do
before having to dig into the proseal. I found that I could go
ahead and attach the trim tab horns to the trim tab skins. Well,
I found out that the aft-most rivet on the inboard horn was a pretty
tight fit (the one closest to the closeout tab bend). The horn
was pushing the flush set one way, while the bend in the closeout tab
was pushing the upper yoke the other. there was no way to set the
rivet properly with the set up I had. So I took one of the flush
sets I rarely use and ground one side of it down in order to clear the
bend in the horn (see below). This allowed me to get the squeezer
close enough to the horn in order for the yoke to clear the bend in the
closeout tab inside the skin and actually sit flush on the rivet.
This actually worked out nice.
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The
last thing I did for the night was to attach the trim tab spar lower
flange to the skin. This was pretty straight forward except for
the most inboard rivet. This rivet probably needs to be set
before the horns are attached since the edge of the head is right up
against the flange of the horn... literally! In order to set it I
built up a couple of layers of scrap and taped that in place over the
head of the rivet, and then set it. Wasn't perfect, but they're
done now.
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