Priming right leading edge ribs and skin - 1.5 hours

Totally motivated to keep building. I dove into priming the right leading edge ribs and skin. Same process as the left. Scrub, MEK, Aluma-brite, MEK, Prime. it was nice and warm, so of course all the priming was done outside!!


Mike came over later in the evening and we set off to work on his S51 Mustang. But unfortunately we quickly hit a roadblock trying to attach his elevators to his horizontal stabilizer. After 3 hours we drilled two holes. Yup....We are spoiled by the RV kits compared to the old school way of building. (And they built the original mustangs in 120 days!)

Red Deer Fly-in Breakfast

What a beautiful day for a road trip! The sun is shining and its nice a warm. My buddy Mike and I hopped in the car hit Starbucks for a Coffee and drove out to the Red Deer Airport. The Red Deer flying club was hosting their annual Fly-in Breakfast. What a treat. Breakfast was the usual fair. Eggs, Pancakes, Ham and Coffee. We showed up just about 8:30am. We were in for a treat. Mike spotted the F1 rocket straight away. We decided to eat first and then go stroll around. But wouldn't you know, the F1 rocket and an RV7 were soon getting set to leave. Unfortunately mike didn't get a chance to look over the F1 rocket. I know he's burning for having questions answered as he's just getting into his F1 build.


But the disappointment of missing a plane didn't last long as there where so many other great planes around. A very nice Shinn 2150 was at the show, and the pilot was kind enough to let me jump into the cockpit. A tight fit for my 6'-3" frame. But so much fun nonetheless.







There were a good number of RV7A's on hand which I was in heaven. Pilot Jay who I met last year had his out but he has switched his rudder out with the original (RV9?) rudder configuration the RV7 was to have. He was very pleased with the handling of the plane with it. Pilot Eugene was there as well as a few other new folks that I got to meet. I took a ton of pictures of little build details, or differences that I keep for future reference for all those future head scratching moments. Just a wealth of great information. By the time we were ready to head for home, my cheeks were sore from smiling...what a good day.

Prep'd the right leading edge - 4 hours

Now it was on to the right leading edge. The same boring prep work as before. Cleco, match drill, dis assemble, deburr everything, try to deburr the ribs, use the dremmel.

Cleaned up the nose rib tips as much as possible....long process with those. First go over segmented flange with a small round file, then a flat file, then smooth with a dremmel, then finish with maroon scotchbrite. I then dimpled the nose ribs.


It was such a beautiful day out, I threw in the towel and called it a day!

Riveted the left leading edge - 5 hours

I finally managed a good long day. Getting home early from work, I was ready to rivet the left leading edge. First order of business before riveting was to remove the primer from the stall warner bracket to allow a good ground for the wiring. The dremmel tool made easy work of it.

Then I began to cleco the leading edge assembly together. Never an easy task to get the nose ribs in and clecoe'd up as everything is a nice snug fit. Slow and easy is key, A tap here and a tap there. At one point I removed all the celco's and re-cleco'd

I started the first couple of rivets with the 4" no hole squeezer but I had a tough time getting rivets to squeeze nice and straight so I was drilling out a few rivets and re-setting them. I then switched over to the bucking bar. It's been quite a long time since I have bucked rivets so again...drilling out a few here and there. After about 20 rivets then I began to hit my stride. I did as much as I could, but found that I was having trouble setting the rivets in the nose as the curved surface was making it difficult to get the gun to stay in place. Not wanting to wreck anything I stopped and decided to wait for another day when I could have a bucking partner to help with setting the rivets.

Priming Left leading edge ribs - Finished stall warn assembly - 3.5 hours

I managed to spend a good amount of time in the garage tonight. I had set up the washtubs to use the Chem-brite 218 that I had bought a few weeks ago. The process was simple. Scuff with scotchbrite, wipe with MEK, Bath in Chem-brite, rinse, wipe with MEK and Prime. Sounds like a lot of steps but it's very quick and the chem-brite acid does a great job.






Now that the ribs are drying, I moved onto finishing the W-432 joint plate nutplate riviting. All went extremely well and quick.

Then...I was back riveting the stall warner assembly.

Assembly of the stall warner is a little tricky. you really have to pay attention to the washer thicknesses. It matters and on the first round I didn't get it right. So a quick disassemble and reassemble and I was finished.

It works pretty slick.

More Preparing the Left leading edge - 3 hours

I had decided to change the order of process with priming. Do you prime and then dimple, or dimple then prime? Well with the 2 part epoxy that I had originally started out with, priming then dimpling worked just fine. But now that I have switched to self etching primer is another story. Seems that dimpling after priming has a tenancy to scuff the primer exposing the metal in some areas.

So from now on with the self etching primer I will prime after dimpling and see how that goes. I wasted no time setting up. I scuffed up the areas that I want to prime, then I started dimpling.
 
Once I was done the dimpling I went back over everything with more maroon scotchbrite to ensure good adhesion. A round of degreaser and remover, a round of MEK, then a coat of primer.

Once that was done, now came the tedious task of deburring the nose ribs. I found that it is a bit tricky to deburr some of the holes as some burrs are stubborn to get out, and access to the inside holes is not easy. A dremmel tool with the scotchbrite wheel is your friend in this case. I also filed and smoothed out the nose ribs really well. Lots of work, but worth it. I finished the rib prep by dimpling.

Preparing the Left leading edge - 2.5 hours

Not much in the way of pictures. I match drilled the left leading edge assembly and removed the ribs. I then deburred the skin. All I need to do is prep and prime mating surfaces but I want to have a little more time to start down that road.

So not wanting to dive into a whole load of work so late, I riveted on the K1100-08 nutplates to the splice plates. Always a good feeling to rivet! Means stuff is ready to go together.