More Dimpling and Resetting Bad Rivets in the Subskin

Today I dimpled the holes in the two inboard ribs with the pneumatic squeezer. I also drilled out and re-set about 5 nut plate rivets as I described in the previous post. That was relatively uneventful, and although I did not go through the same agony of clamping blocks like I did before, I did still have to come up with ways to secure the skin to drill out the rivets. When I set the new ones I simply held it in my hand on the workbench, with my fingers close enough to provide good resistance for the rivet set.

I decided to go ahead and dimple all the rivet holes in the subskin and the ribs. I did NOT leave the 2  most forward rivet holes alone as I previously indicated that I might do. I decided that the hole integrity is good for a 3/32 dimple and rivet on both of those parts, so I will see how the outer skin dimple situation goes when the time comes with those wallowed out oversized holes. Email will go to Vans tomorrow to ask if I can increase to an AN426AD-4 rivet if necessary to provide the correct grip for the LE outer skin holes.

Then I scuffed, cleaned and primed the access panel and permanent patch plate with NAPA 7220 self-etching primer.The weather around here is really cold and rainy, and my primer is extremely old as well, so I wasn't sure if it would apply properly or not, with all the high humidity, etc. After letting it dry it seems like it applied OK, so I will go with it for now.

I set one rivet in the wrong hole the other day, and so that one just had to be removed. However, when I checked the dimple one side had been crushed just a bit, so I took the time to clear the bench and set up the C-Frame again to try to reform the dimple a bit. that did not really seem to make much difference, but at least I tried. The hole in question attaches the outer LE skin to the subskin. It would have matched a similar hole in the new access panel's mounting bracket had I used that. Since i am using the subskin for that purpose, that hole won't be riveted until I am ready to secure the entire subskin to the outer skin.

For the rest of the day I studied the Fuel Tank instructions and diagrams to re-acclimate myself to the tank part numbers and assembly sequences.  More on that in the posts for next week...

Winter is coming - and I still need heat in my garage....

No pics tonight.

KPR