Brief Description: Riveting the Exterior Sheet Metal
Finally back at work after a couple of trips. I got to fly a C441 down to the Turks and Caicos. Never been there or flown over significant water before. I also just had an offer accepted to purchase a C441 SN 027. Hope to close by the end of the month.
I got the sheet metal back from powder coating. About half of it was crap. If you look at the top of the second picture you can see a dark area. This is where the coating was so thin that you can see through it. Most of the bad stuff is on the bottom but the sides are pretty poor as well.
As I have mentioned several times I want to fly and am not planning on winning at OshKosh. I did not feel like waiting an additional 2-3 weeks to get it stripped and recoated, so here we are.
The sheet metal fits pretty well as supplied by Safari. If I had it to do over again I would work the corners with an English Wheel. All the holes got filled with Clecos. I turned the ship up and started at the bottom. I had to redrill each hole because of the powder coating.
While waiting for my buddy Steve Dunne to show up I mounted the P-Mags on the engine. I ran into a problem with the hole for the cotter pin in the drive shaft. The hole was not straight. If I centered up one side the other was covered by part of the nut. I found that if I covered up a little of each hole that the pin slid through easily. I contacted Jim Dement at E-Mag and pointed out the problem and he was very responsive.
We got about half way done before we had to leave to play golf.
