Brief Description: Rivet Right Elevator and Correct H-Stab
Complete riveting the right elevator and was verifying alignment of hinge halves when I realized that the hinge halves installed on the horizontal stabilizer (by the person I bought the partially completed tail kit from!) did not install them correctly. The instructions note the distance of the hinge to the horizontal stabilizer skin, however, the skin was not trimmed back on one side. The second photo shows how the deflection in the steel rod that joins the piano hinges as it goes from one hinge to the next. On the left center of the photo you can see about 3/32” of the skin past the flange of the elevator that was used as the alignment point for the hinge half on that side.
I decided to drill out the hinge that was not installed properly, trim the horizontal stabilizer skin back and reinstall a new hinge half. The rivets on the aft side of the stabilizer are not perfectly aligned from right to left side, but fortunately even after trimming and reinstalling the new hinge half there was still the proper 2x diameter of the hole to the edge of the skin. The two hinge halves are now laser straight from one side to the next.
I verified the alignment of all hinges (the right elevator hinge was already riveted, but I wanted to double check the positioning of the left hinge – there was no room for error here). Completed drilling left elevator hinge.
Note: I used my thickness sander to sand a couple of 4x4s to the same dimensions. These allow me to layout parts with clecoes on both sides as shown in figure 3.
