Tonight I put together the two pieces of the rear spar 603 and the reinforcement bars (609) and they are not coming apart any time soon… rivets BABY! I used the squeezer to set the rivets and only had one bad rivet, so far. It was rivet #87. Yep, #87 didn’t get pushed all the way down flush as there was some primer shrinking the hole…I caught quite a few others that this happened to – but #87 was sitting proud and as a result - didn’t get set properly. I carefully drilled him out and replaced him. After setting the rest of the 603->609 rivets I moved on to set the rivets that hold the hinge supports in. “Hint: This is where you need to start trimming your rivet lengths”… yes, that would be a good thing for Van’s to put in the instructions – but they let you figure that out for yourself… I double/triple/quadruple checked the rivet size when I went to the new parts – and reset the squeezer, but BAMMO – the first rivet bent over slightly because it was too long. Long story short – I stopped there and reviewed – and I should have trimmed the 470-AD4-6 rivets down a 1/16 or two so that they wouldn’t bend over.
NOTE : The rivets below are installed "backwards" as the machined head should typically be against the thinner material and the shop head should be against the thicker material...but don't worry about mine - it gets fixed later (foreshadowing).
