fitting | Andrew's RV-7 Build Log

Sealed Right Tank’s Inboard Rib

July 4, 2011

Well, after stopping by Lowe’s today to pick up some latex gloves (I picked up latex instead of nitrile…I like the latext better), I got to work on sealing the inboard rib in.

For this rib, things were a little different. First, I can squeeze all of the skin to rib rivets (which is nice). Second, I have to pay attention to the reinforcement plates that need to go in place, and third, I have some fittings that can be installed once the rib is in place.

After buttering up the rib and riveting the 43 inboard AN426AD3-3.5 rivets, I ended up with this.

The clever readers will see the uppermost rivet on the right side is NOT SET. I caught it when I ran back outside later to count how many rivets I had set. (I knew counting rivets was a good idea.)

After getting the rib riveted in, I can now slide the reinforcement plates into place. (Like it says in the instructions, if you install these first, you won’t have room to squeeze the skin to rib rivets in the nose.) There’s a thick angle on the outside of the rib (shown below) and a thin .032 plate on the inside.

After lathering that guy with some pro-seal, I snapped this picture and got it installed.

That fan I bought a few weeks back is worth its weight in gold. It was 95°F today.

Fast forward a few minutes and some loud noises, and I had 6 AN470AD4-8 rivets set in the nose reinforcement area.

Perfect. (Well. Not perfect, but once I cover those smileys with proseal, you will never know.)

Fast forward another few minutes, and I got the flop tube installed with the -6 fitting on the inside and the nut on the outside, then I installed the vent tube (just flared) to the -4 fitting on the outside, you can see the aluminum washer and nut on the inside here. I made sure everything had a good bead of proseal around it before torquing everything down.

Nice.

All that’s left to do on the right tank is installed the anti-hangup brackets, rivet a An470AD6- rivet in the tooling hole of the outboard rib, and then close that bad boy up.

Oh, and fit the access plate with some stainless cap screws, instead of machine screws. More on that later.

2.0 hours. 43 rivets on the inboard rib. 6 rivets for the reinforcement plates. 1 drilled out (Easy as PIE!) Hope everyone had a good fourth. (It’s storming here. Boo.)

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Leave a Comment » | Wings | Tagged: Drilled, fitting, flop tube, proseal, Rib, Rivet | Permalink
Posted by Andrew

Right Tank Plumbing

June 30, 2011

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Okay, so a little of my work this evening was actually done AT WORK today. (Don’t tell my boss.)

Since I don’t have a Parker Rolo-Flair (shouldn’t it be “flare”?), but we have a few at work, I asked one of my RV buddies from work to show me how he does it. So, I brought my prebent -4 tube into him, and he, well, showed me how to do it.

(I was going to buy a rolo-flair tool, but at $80, I don’t want to buy one until I really need one. I need this flare (see?) now, the one for the left tank in a month or so (more like 3 or 4), and then I won’t need one until working on the fuse and running fuel, brake, and vent lines. I don’t want an $80 tool gathering dust until then.)

Anyway, he showed me how to do it, with a little cutting oil on the flaring (see!?) cone.

Back home, this is what I ended up with.

(He also showed me how to roll the straight portion of the vent line, which I was having a heck of a time getting perfectly straight, on a countertop or flat piece of door. You roll it like a roller between your fingers and the countertop. I was inside doing it on the granite countertop while the girlfriend was making dinner. She said “Get your fuel line off my counter!”)

No, she didn’t. But it would have been funny if she did, right?

FLARE!

Next, I fed the vent line through all the snap bushings and slid the inboard rib with the -4 bulkhead fitting in place.

Looks good here.

How perfect were my measurements! Now I just have to bent the end up a little to get to the highest portion of the tank.

I copied Mike Bullock here, and used a wrench and another lever to bend it slowly upward.

Nice trick, Mike.

After repositioning the inboard rib, this sucker is at the very highest point.

Oh, I also did a little safety wiring. Then, thinking that I could unscrew the nut, and re-clock it to have a shorter, more sturdy safety wire run, I figured out that the nut only has one “entrance” for the threads, so the clocking is as shown only.

First try, which was perfectly acceptable.

Second try, after reciting the famous quote ‘perfect is the enemy of good enough.’

Alright, Andrew, stop messing with it.

0.5 hours. Time to start thinking about closing this bad boy up.

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Leave a Comment » | Wings | Tagged: fitting, safety-wire, tank, vent line | Permalink
Posted by Andrew

Inboard Tank Attach Bracket

June 6, 2011

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Well, my order came in from Van’s today. Here are the goods.

It's like Christmas, but in June.

First up, a W-408-1R, NOTCHED NOSE RIB. Turns out, I ruined the other one by not making sure it was all lined up prior to drilling. I have a good idea on how to make this one work out, so stay tuned.

Also included in this order, my flop tubes, and some snap bushings, which I needed to order due to all of the holes I drilled in the wing ribs. (Oh man, now I want a steak.)

Leading edge rib, flop tubes, and snap bushings.

Then, the proseal (black death!), fuel tank leak test kit, and 25′ of black corrugated tubing that should fit nicely in the holes I drilled in the ribs (see steaky link above).

Black tubing, proseal, and test kit.

Even though I REALLY WANTED to break out the proseal and start slathering it all over my workbench, airplane, hands, clothes, and face, I decided to wait until my popsicle sticks and syringes come in from amazon.

So tonight, I decided to work on the right inboard attach bracket.

After studying the plans, I grabbed the AA6…I’m not going to type out the part number. See the picture below.

Yup. That's it.

(Insert silence here where I tried for 10 minutes to figure out what R1 is.)

I’m really sorry to admit this, but I started scouring the internet. Googled “VAF R1 TANK ATTACH BRACKET” and “R1 NOTE DWG 16A VANS RV-7.”

To no avail.

Then, someone’s build site (can’t remember who), admitted that they spent 10 minutes and some google searches trying to find out what the R1 stood for before they realized that it wasn’t a note, it was RADIUS=1 inch.

Duh.

Okay, I’ve got some lines drawn.

Whose cute toes are those?

I think that is T-410 on the top of the picture. I used that to trace mirror images on the 2" side.

Then, I pulled a can of OFF from the shelf and used it to make a 1" radius circle. Then, connected the tangents after drawing a 1/2" line along each side of the bottom. (The drawing is half scale, and it was 1.4" on the drawing.)

After some sawing, I for some reason lost interest and broke out some of the snap bushings.

Two of the smaller size (SB375-4), and one of the bigger size (SB437-4).

Sweet. These will work perfectly.

Nice.

Umm, who took this redundant picture?

Okay, back to sawing.

Hmm. This turned out to be annoying with the jigsaw. Maybe I need a bandsaw.

Done.

Insert about 30 minutes of deburring on the scotchbrite wheel….

Deburred.

So, then I put it in the nose of the inboard rib, and admired how nicely it fit. (Actually, it still needs a little trimming around the edges.)

Looks good.

Okay, I didn’t do a good job of taking pictures here, but basically, I drew a line 1 and 1/16″ back from the tip of the rib, and then drew a line parallel to the front edge, but 2 diameters of the final rivet size (1/8″) away.

Here's where I got the 1 and 1/16" from.

Then, I marked and drilled 5 of the 6 rivet holes, along with the center hole, which is the pilot hole for the 9/16″ hole that the flop tube fitting will fit through.

confused?

Here's a better picture. 5 plus the pilot drilled, and I've laid in the AN nut to see where I can put the sixth (marked) without rivet head interference.

This is me trying to figure out what size hole I’ll need for the fitting.