Brief Description: Fixing the left and right flap brace
Well I called Vans this morning and asked if I was suposed to countersink the flap brace to accept the dimples in the wing skin. The answer was yes. Crap! So I asked what are my options and can I countersink the flap hinge to accept the dimples in the flap brace. The answer to that was no because of a lack of thickness in the flap hinge. But if I was willing to put a narrow strip of material on the backside of the hinge the entire length of the hinge, I could countersink. The other options were to completely replace the replace the flap brace and start over after drilling out all the pop rivets holding the flap brace to the spar, or I could try squeezing the dimples out of the flap brace and countersink after. Vans said to do that I would pull the flap brace back far enough to get a hand squeezer in there to flatten out the dimples and follow up with a countersink. I chose option 3. I wasn't easy but I was able to figure it out to do it without the help of extra hands. There is a lot of tension in the flap brace but I found I could slide in a U channel shaped aluminium piece I had laying around and slide a piece of 1x2 on top to get the right height and push the flap brace back far enough to get access for the squeezer and countersink bit. Sorry about the pictures being rotated.
