Wing structure starts to go together

Tuesday 26th August 2008. 2 hr

Riveted both aft spar assemblies. Riveted #6 inspection platenuts on right wing main spar.

The shop where I bought the compressor (Halfords); a chain of motor parts, accessories and tools suppliers) replaced the regulator for me under guarantee. In fact, after a call through to the manufacturer's help desk, they were willing to swap the entire compressor, but I felt (stupidly, perhaps) that that was too much trouble and it would have involved a trip home to get the current unit. I was just happy to be able to get straight back to work.

With the new regulator installed, I quickly put it to work and began the final assembly of some wing parts for the first time. Platenuts aside, this was the first time I had permanently fixed wing parts to each other and it felt good. It was an easy job for the air squeezer. Having taped up the holes to be left open last night, there was no chance of a boo-boo and that made the work quicker.

I was not happy with the AN470AD4-5 rivets called out for the W907-D and E doublers. They looked too long. I often make my own calculation of the right rivet size rather than take Vans word for it and it is surprising how often they call out really long rivets for the thickness of material involved. I can use my cheap digital calipers to measure the total thickness of the materials but, more often, I look up the thickness of each part in section 4 of the manual and add them up before adding 150% of the rivet shank thickness. Another method is to use the little blue gauge supplied by Isham in their kit. The cut out in the corner for each size of rivet has one side set to 150% of rivet diameter and the other side set to 200%. On this occassion, I decided to use AN470AD4-4s instead and the shop heads still more than filled the shop head gauge.

The missing platenuts from the spars arrived by post today from Vans so I was able to install the final #6 platenuts for the inspection plates on the right wing.