Odds And Ends
With the fuselage on the gear two tasks that need to get done are: A. Adjusting axle alignment and B. Adding 10 nutplates along the exhaust tunnel to secure the Cooling Flap Assembly. Both are 2-man jobs. So, I busied myself with other small tasks until I had help available. I started out by removing 10 rivets under the fuselage where the nutplates will go. After upsizing those holes to #19 to accept a #8 machine screw I used my nutplate jig to drill the adjacent rivet holes. Most I could drill from inside the fuselage but four of them needed to be drilled from underneath. I used a reference line drawn through the centers of the line of rivets to make sure the jig was aligned properly. I also elected to use NAS 1097 rivets for the first time. These have a very shallow, low profile flush head. The countersink needed is thus much shallower then for a normal AN426 flush rivet. With the rivets hole drilled I needed help to actual set them. Building buddy Craig came by today and we quickly drove the 20 rivets and got all 10 nut plates attached. Everything lined up on the Cooling Flap Assembly base plate when I temporarily attached it underneath for a fit check. Glad that chore is over. Axle alignment will have to wait till Friday when our custom alignment tool arrives from Fed Ex. I've done other "busy work": Attaching landing gear leg tube dirt covers, building some flap and aileron pushrods, creating wing root cover stiffeners and adding AN fittings to the brakes.
Flap pushrod
Test fitting the Cooling Flap base plate to the exhaust tunnel and the new nutplates.
Newly riveted nutplates along the interior footwell.
Starting to separate and create the 19 wing root stiffeners.
Adding blue AN fittings to the brakes.
After painting these round covers are siliconed over the tops of the landing gear tubes to keep out dirt and moisture. A gap is left in the silicon for air pressure to expand.
I use Lego blocks secured with double sided tape under the fuselage to keep the drill square to the rivets when drilling them out. All 10 rivets were removed hassle free.
Using the nutplate jig under the fuselage. The center pin fits in the #19 screw hole in the fuselage. I rotated the jig to sight the blue reference line through the rivet drill hole. Once the first rivet hole is drilled the jig is flipped over and the pin fits in the newly drilled hole. Everything is aligned and you can then drill the second rivet hole.
These pushrods go from the stick laterally into the wings to operate an aileron bellcrank.
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This post is from Scott's RV-14 Build
