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Jims RV-8
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Date: 3-24-2013
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Number of Hours: 3.00
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Manual Reference:
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Brief Description: Dis-assemble left elevator
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The first picture is of the wing spars standing vertically waiting patiently to be put into service for the wing build...
Picture 2 is the left elevator before disassembly “surgery”. My initial thought was just to replace the whole thing – order the parts and rebuild the left elevator! I counted up all the parts for a complete rebuild and determined that it would be about $250 + shipping. As I looked at the parts list and the prices, I noticed that the powder coated control horn is a $38 part held on by 12 rivets. “I can drill those 12 out and not waste that part”, I thought ... then I counted the rivets holding the skin to the spar – “If I take those rivets out I can save the spar, which also connects the spar reinforcement plates, platenuts, etc…”. You see, all saved parts are a double savings of time to build and money savings, so the more I looked at it, the more it made sense to not waste good parts, if in fact, they were good parts. I determined that if I didn’t drill out the parts perfectly, then I wouldn’t use them – so tonight I began the process of seeing how good a “rivet driller” I could learn to be….and I surprised myself.
I knew that the skin would be trash, so I wasn’t trying to save that, but the stiffeners are inexpensive, but very labor intensive, so I would try and save as many of those as I could. I ended up saving all of them. Upon the advice of Skyking Bob I purchased a set of 5x “glasses” and Skyking also sent me a center drill to make it easier to drill out the rivets. Both were a big help! Thanks “Sky”! All in all, after looking at all of the drilled out holes with the 5x magnifiers - there were 4 holes that were slightly elongated by “imperfect” drilling. Since they were not consecutive, and probably won’t even need “ooops rivets” I am very satisfied that the parts I will be re-using will be just as good as a new part from Van’s. I placed the order for the needed parts with Van’s tonight – New skin, new trim spar, new end rib, interior rib, counter weight skin, trim
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Here is where the wing spars will live temporarily
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Start
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Finish
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