This morning I finished up the center section cover and related parts. I riveted the two nutplates to the stainless firewall recess where the center section cover is screwed in place. Usually for nutplate rivets I've been lightly countersinking and using NAS1097AD3 reduced-head rivets, but the stainless is way too hard to do that easily. Instead, I dimpled the steel for regular AN426AD3 rivets and used these cool nutplates with dimpled ears, which I found in a box of junk left over from a previous project. I think I may have picked them up at the local aircraft parts store at some point. You can kind of see the dimpled ears in this photo if you look closely.
The fuel selector housing gets nutplates too:
Since I had it in hand, I also decided to fit the fuel selector mounting plate for my Andair fuel valve. I had one of these on my last RV and it was very nice – the stock Van's one is perfectly servicable, but it looks like it came off a garden hose.
I cut off the part of the mounting plate that's only used with manual elevator trim, and drilled the 1" diameter hole for the valve body with my MOAUB.*
* Mother Of All Unibits
I back drilled through the valve's mounting ears into the plate for the bolt holes. Luckily they didn't overlap either of the holes that were pre-drilled in the plate for Van's brass valve. Here's the cover plate being test fitted.
Here's the fuel valve temporarily installed in its home on the front of the spar. Ooh, shiny.
