First thing, I have to give some mad props to Van’s.
If you remember from yesterday, I put in a web order with Van’s for some stuff. At the top of my list was that leading edge rib I messed up a few posts ago, and I FORGOT TO ORDER THE RIB!!!
Anyway, here’s how a short interaction with Van’s (e-mail):
Me: Good morning, Barb…[snip]…Is there any way you can add an item to my order? I need one of the following, copied from “the list”: W-408-1R, NOTCHED NOSE RIB 032, $23.80. If not, I understand…it was my error. But if so, thank you so much!
Within an hour (and definitely before normal business hours in OR):
Barb: Andrew, I have forwarded this on to our parts department who will download
the web orders this morning and get it added to your order. Barb
Then, after about another hour:
Dear Andrew,
The part was added to your order as you requested. I just caught it
prior to being shipped this morning.Pam
Van’s order dept.
Oh man, Van’s is awesome. Also, I figured out from the charge that shipping (UPS ground) and handling from Van’s was about $15. Not bad.
Anyway, being a Friday, I was looking for something relatively painless to do tonight. I pulled out the T-711 bundle and started in on the stiffeners.
Here's the bundle.
I ended up getting all of the stiffeners ready, for both tanks. I’ll put the ones for the left tank away until I’m ready to do that tank.
Below you can see 3 of the four sizes of stiffeners. The fourth size is pretty small, and I left them out of the picture.
Three sets of long, one set of kinda long, one set of kinda short.
Lastly, I took off all of the vinyl. If I were smarter, I would have pulled the vinyl off before cutting them. It would have been a lot easier.
Pile-o'-vinyl.
It was a little late to fire up the scotchbrite wheel, so I pulled out the right z-brackets and clecoed them to the spar. I spent a good five minutes staring at the plans to make sure I had them in the right orientation.
I'm doing this because I never matchdrilled the rear flanges of the interior ribs. The z-brackets and baffle are full-size holes, so I just need to run the drill through them with the flanges in place.
Drilling some holes.
Moved the clecos, drilled the other three.
Then, since I wasn’t too tired yet, I broke out the microstop countersink and started countersinking the skin-to-baffle holes. You do this so the baffle is easy to slide in place with the all pro-seal flying around. If it were dimpled, it would be harder.
Countersinking a skin this thin definitely leaves a knife-edge, but that’s what Van’s calls for here.
I’m planning on using the thicker tank dimple dies everywhere else, which should leave a little extra room for proseal underneath the rivet head, but I couldn’t bring myself to deepen these countersinks at all. We’ll see if it works out.
Looks good to me.
Much countersinking ensued...
A closeup, for those of you who are interested.
Anyway, it as a nice night in the garage. 1 hour, and getting closer to the black death.
Andrew's RV-7 Build Log 