Finishing Tank and Access Panel Plate Nuts – 7 hrs

Sunday Aug 15, 2010

Here is the agenda for today.

1. Up early for two hours in the garage on the airplane.
2. Go to church
3. Get a haircut
4. Work on the wings
5. Pack for a business trip tomorrow.

My goal today is to finish the nut plates on the spars. I continued riveting the final row of rivets on the left main spar. Here is a shot with the nut plate installed with one cleco and one rivet each. Then I riveted down the line with the squeezer, then removed the clecos and installed the second rivet in each nut plate, then squeezed those.

Here is a shot of some of the installed nut plates on the inside of the spar flange. The lower row is all #8 nut plates and the upper row is #6 so you have to be careful not to zone out an install #8s on the top also.

Here is the left main spar with all the nut plates installed on the flanges.

The right main spar went faster than the left because I didn’t have to study the plans as much, the parts were already located, and the tools were set up. Here is one of the flanges with rivet hole countersunk and primed, ready for nut plates to be installed.

Here is yours truly squeezing away on them rivets.

There are also two #10 nut plates on the web of each spar. It took a while to find the callouts for these on the drawings. They are right at the limit but I could squeeze the rivets with my 3-inch yoke.

Here is the right main spar. Making progress!

Here are the countersinks all primed for corrosion resistance.

I had just enough time to start working on the time down brackets. I trimmed the length of the extrusions, the deburred, marked and drilled one corner through hole, cut the shims to length and deburred the edges. Here I have clamped the parts to the spar using the one hole as the alignment reference. I used blue tape to hold the shims in place under the extrusion. Then I flipped the spar over and drilled the holes through the pieces using the spar holes as the guide.

Here I’ve removed the clamps and put four bolts in to confirm alignment. The edge distance on the shims is a little low on one side but these are just shims and there is no shear load on them so I am not worried. I’ll adjust a little to prevent that on the other spar set.