Today I had to go fix my daughters Odessy van. She lives about 1-1/2 hours away. I took the slow truck (1973 Datsun, with a wopping 1600cc engine, 58mph is all it will do) no radio, just my thoughts. Replaced the distributor and positive battery cable, but you don't need to know that.
The aileron seemed to be twisted from the counterbalance tube. I drilled the nose ribs absoulely accuate as possible without using the milling machine, but they seemed off and causing the twist in the spar and hence the warping of the skins. Bought some sand on the way home and made sandbags from gallon zip-lock baggies. I drilled out the rivets I had temporarly put in originally as per instructions. Without the counterbalance tube attached to the spar I attached the skins and they fit reasonably good. I drilled the holes to a #42 bit size. One reason was to get the colecos to fit easier also to relieve some of the mismatch when the nose skin, aileron skin and spar all come together. After doing all of these things I assembled everything together. This time the frame stayed flat and the nose skin was a lot easier to install. I rotated the counterbalance tube to allow me to drill the nose rib holes in new spots. The skin is wrapped tightly around the counterbalance tube and that tube is not going anywhere. Make sure the tube is centered. Match drill the holes. I put a coleco into every hole because I wanted to make sure it would not move around on me. Drilling the counterbalance holes was the most time consuming. The counterbalane tube is 4130 stainless and therefore very hard. Fresh bits in an electric drill gives a slow speed so the metal dosen't get hot. If stainless gets hot a standard drill bit won't touch it. Drilled and colecoed as I went along. When I disassembled the whole mess I kept the nose skin, nose ribs, and counterbalance tube together. Then I drilled the inside hole of the nose ribs and put a coleco in. I then removed the colecos to gain access to the other rivet hole and drilled that one. When I reassembled i
