410 hours on the hobbs - Replacement ribs and spar arrived

Finally got my replacement E702, E703, and E704 replacement parts from Vans yesterday. I ended up having to re-do about a half a page of prep steps in order to get everything back to where it was before the riveting blunder described in my previous post. When the parts arrived, they were in a very thick cardboard tube. I removed the spar only to find that the flange on the tip of the spar had been badly bent over during shipping. Upon close inspection, and after bending the flange back into place, it looked like the rivet holes were not compromised, and the skin was not creased in any way, so I was able to flatten everything back out with the rivet gun, a flush set, and a back rivet plate. I was beginning to think that this elevator is becoming a bad omen for some reason, but elected to try to push through it and keep working on it.

I also managed to remove the former E703 tip rib from the former messed up spar. Unfortunately the rivet holes where very badly mangled after attempting to set the rivets with a flange that had become badly deformed after screwing up the E704 counterbalance rib (see previous post). I tried to take my rivet gun with the mushroom flush set and lightly bang out the mangled metal around each hole using a back rivet plate, which seemed to work OK, but the rivet holes still appeared to be a bit oblong from attempting to set the rivet in a badly bent flange. I had originally thought I might be able to re-use the tip rib so that I would have less fabrication to do on new parts, but that turned out not to be the case.

Here is a list of all the things I have done in the past two evenings to get all three parts back to the state where I am ready to attempt riveting again:

1. Flute both ribs and straighten the edges with my edge bending tool. I found another tip on a builder web site after searching VAF that reminded me that the real purpose of fluting these two ribs is to make absolutely certain that the webs of both ribs are flush with each other with no gaps. This makes attaching the E713 counterbalance skin a much easier task, since th holes line up pretty well if the ribs  both fit together properly.
2. Remount the E714 lead counterweight so that I could re-drill the bolt holes in the forward flanges of each rib. With the bolt holes already in the counterbalance skin and the lead counterweight, I was able to take a number 10 drill bit and lightly mark the forward flange of each rib by turning the bit by hand. Then I disassembled the rib assembly and step drilled the holes in each rib flange to the proper size using the same technique described in earlier posts when I originally performed the counterweight preparation steps. These new holes actually turned out much better than the previous holes. It's much easier to mark the flange when the holes in the E713 counterbalance skin and the E714 lead counterweight have already been drilled. The new holes ended up much closer to the center of the flange this time, so that was a good thing.
3. Match drilled the rivet holes in each rib web attaching the E703 and E704 ribs together. Also match drilled the flange rivet holes in both ribs. (You know, the ones that totally screwed up when attempting to rivet them previously).
4. Clecoed the entire elevator frame to the elevator skin and match drilled all the remaining spar-to-skin attach holes, including drilling the 4 holes that are not predrilled on the ends of the E703 tip rib. Match drilled the counterbalance skin holes to the holes in both ribs.
5. Disassembled everything, deburred all the holes in the ribs and the spar, and dimpled them.
6. Countersunk the 4 holes on the inboard section of the spar that attach the E705 root rib to the back of the spar.

Now I just need to finish edge deburring the parts, and clean, prep, and prime them, and I will be back where I was a week ago, supposedly ready to rivet. I will tell you that it was not fun trying to cleco and match drill the new frame parts to a skin adn other parts that had already been dimpled. I am a little concerned that the holes and dimples may not line up as well as they did before, but I have done this sort of thing in the past and not had any problems with the parts fitting together correctly, so we shall see....

I went on VAF in search of info about how others had tackled the end rib riveting problems. Not surprisingly,  I found many others that have had similar problems with this part of the assembly going back as far as 2005. Most were saying that the solution is to hand squeeze these rib flange rivets, and to use the tip of riveting the flange of the E704 rib first, followed by the E703 rib, before attaching the two ribs together via the rivets in the webs of each rib. Van's instructions still say to attach both ribs together first, and then attach the whole assembly and rivet the flanges to the spar, which just does not work out if you try to do it that way. The problem is that while most were describing using the workaround, I could not find any pics of the yoke, rivet sets, and positioning they used to set thse rivets. Then I finally found one. You need to use a flange yoke, a 1/8 inch x 3/8 inch AN 470 round head rivet set, and a 1/2 inch x 3/8 inch flat rivet set on the other end. It is always a little harder to squeeze 1/8 inch rivets with a hand squeezer, but it can be done, and you have much better control with the hand squeezer. You have to leave the tip rib off when you set the flange rivets for the counterbalance rib, because the thickness of the squeezer prevents you from being able to get the round headed set over the head of the rivet due to lack of clearancefrom the tip rib. All you have to do is flex the counterweight rib out of the way just a bit, adn you can set the rivets correctly.

I bet I could convince Vans to give me job where my sole responsibility would be to evaluate and identify all of the latest build issues from their current set of plans for every airplane kit that they provide, determine the work arounds that are being used to correct the problems, and update all of the plans for each aircraft to incorporate the new and better building techniques. The fact that they seem to have no interest in receiving this info and making the changes to their aging sets of plans really pisses me off.

Anyway, I digress. For the record, I wanted to include some "before" pics of the fit of the flanges for both tip ribs against the spar before I rivet them together. If you compare these to the pics at the end of the previous post, you will see just how messed up the flanges of both of the ribs are. The way they appear in these next pics is exactly the way they should look after the flange rivets are set:

Notice that there are NO gaps in between the flanges in the above pics. Everything is nice and flush. Should be ready to try this again tomorrow, after verifying the correct rivet lengths, ensuring the parts are clamped tightly to the table, grinding down my yoke just a bit more, and borrow another set of hands to help hold the rib out of the way. Maybe this time it will work out......MAYBE.