Tonight I returned to rivet the spar doublers and reinforcement angles to the front spar. Here are the parts after a quick priming and light paint job. I don’t normally paint interior parts like these, but I’m not a fan of the self-etching primer. It holds moisture too easily, so I figured a light layer of paint wouldn’t hurt.
Everything was clecoed together and then I used the pneumatic squeezer to the best of my ability to set as many rivets as possible.
I was able to get all the top rivets and center rivets. Unfortunately the bottom angle is too wide for my squeezer’s yoke, so I had to buck these rivets.
I had two minor smilies. Both in the same position on each side; three from the inside on the bottom. They are not worth drilling out.
Riveting the remaining rivets was going to be a challenge, so I played around with several different rivet sets with no luck. I was out of ideas, so I grabbed Mike who happened to be working on his annual.
Luckily he had a single offset rivet that was just the right length. Wrapped with electrical tape to prevent rotation and walking, I was able to get the majority of the remaining rivets.
A few of the rivets required a second set of hands, and Mike was nice enough to help out. We made super quick work of finishing it up. Here you can see the results. I’m extremely happy with how this entire project has turned out. A few blemishes here and there, but there is nothing in this service bulletin that I will lose sleep over. Moreover, I will be more comfortable knowing this SB has been complied with in its entirety.
Next it was time to work on the HS-0002 angles. The process described in the service bulletin instructions is rather convoluted. Essentially they have you clamp one side, then the other. Drill one side, clamp again, remove, and finish drilling. I can only surmise that all of that would be necessary without an angle drill or small clamps. I initially clamped the angle in place with the cleco clamps, but I found this to be insufficient. I wound up, and advice you, to use C-Clamps (unfortunately I didn’t take a picture with the c-clamps. I used the c-clamps to clamp the angle to both the rib AND the spar. Then I began drilling the section that mates to the spar and clecoing as I went. After that was completely drilled and clecoed, I repeated the process for the section mating to the HS-405 rib.
You can see here that both sides are clecoed, and flush.
End result. I completed one side, but not the other. in the next session, I should easily be able to wrap up this project!
