Nutplates

I was having difficulty fastening a number of nutplates in the bootcowl area, several machine screws were having their threads stripped and some weren’t able to be fastened at all. This also caused issues with closing the front doors.

So after giving it a lot of thought and reading up on the subject I realized that I had used a drill bit that under-size. Although the screws fit in the holes, if they were not perfectly aligned it was causing problems.

I removed all the cowls and drilled them to the correct size. At the same time I ran a tap part way into the threads, and added a lubricant to the machine screws.

Reassembling showed a huge improvement, all screws fitting very well.