I was too tired to work much on the plane, so I read ahead in the plans a bit. Looks like the mating of the wings is coming up not too long from now. I measured the plane and the garage, then made little paper cutouts to see if I'll be able to get both wings on and keep the airplane completely inside the garage. Sadly, no – even if I arrange things diagonally it won't all quite fit. One wing will have to protrude outside instead. Darn.
Still a few things to do until I get to that point, though.
Here's a collection of pieces that had to be fabricated for the flap motor mount:
The flap channel gets fitted thusly. The plans call for the joint plate at the top to be bent to an angle of 151.8°. Yeah, whatever – we're not building the space shuttle here. I just adjusted the bend angle until everything fit and drilled it in place.
Here's a shot of the rear side of the flap channel, where the motor pivot bolt goes through. The angle bracket is a little crooked, but that's how the motor geometry worked out. I've seen this on other builders' sites so I don't think it's a problem.
The motor can run the flaps through the entire range of motion without binding or rubbing anywhere. This is up:
This is down:
I got the side panels mostly fitted before calling it a day. With everything in place the flap motor has a little house to live in. I still need to deburr the side panels.
On the left side, you have to notch the side panel to clear the pivot bolt head. I clamped a piece of scrap aluminum to the edge of the cover and used a unibit, which worked well.
The only thing I got done tonight was drilling this little hole at an angle through the end of the flap actuator. In the photo, you can also see the first hole I tried to drill. The bit broke off in the hole and I had no way to get it out, so I had to start another hole. The end of the actuator was also kind of scraped up after all this, so I sprayed some more black enamel on it.
The idea is that you put safety wire through here and it prevents the jam nut from backing out as the flaps go up and down. I'm dubious that this will work very well, so I used permanent threadlocker on the rod end bearing and jam nut when I threaded them into the actuator.
This afternoon's mission: install the flap torque tube. The clevis ends of the weldment got drilled and reamed up to 1/4" for the bolts, and then I drilled and split the center bearing block. My block as supplied was about 1/2" longer than the plans call for, which made where to locate the aft bolt hole a head-scratcher. I decided to put it in the same place it would be if the block was the size called out in the plans, instead of putting it 1/4" from the edge. This turned out to be a good idea (see below).
The weldment is inserted into the end bearing blocks, and the whole mess is put in the baggage bay. It's a tight squeeze but it can be wiggled into place. The center bearing block goes over the left-center subfloor rib. I've heard that some people have trouble with the non-powder-coated part of the weldment ending up in the wrong place, but you can see that mine lined up okay.
After making sure the center bearing block is centered over the rib, I drilled down through the block into the floor and rib, then removed the whole mess and put in nutplates to capture the bolts. Good thing I decided to move the aft hole away from the edge of the block, or the #10 hole would have been uncomfortably close to one of the #8 nutplates that holds the tunnel cover to the ribs.
I notched the tunnel cover so it can be removed without unbolting the flap bearing block. The left side baggage floor is captured by the flap block, so it will be a little harder to remove easily. That means I'll put the strobe power supplies under the right-side baggage floor, which I was planning on doing anyway for lateral balance purposes.
The whole collection of parts is now bolted in place yet again, although it will certainly be removed and replaced several times later on.
So, the flap torque tube is fitted and installed. Next up is the motor and its housing, probably not until next weekend when I have some time to work.
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.
