Seatback bulkhead rivets?

Wondered what others are doing to get to the rivets under the canopy rail as shown in the photo below? I'm thinking about trimming the rail back as noted in the photo. The canopy deck is almost closed under the edge. This is will be a slider canopy.

Thanks.

What I ended up doing is removing the canopy rails. After many hours spent agonizing over it it and thinking about how to get at those rivets, callling Van's etc etc it wasn't that big a deal.

Neil

Getting at those rivets

Well I just trimmed back the edge of the rails as noted in the picture. On the slider you should not need to do this. Did not want to take off the rails but perhaps should have. If the gap bugs me I'll make a cover to blind rivet over the space. It was a pain to put these rivets in and nothing gets around the corners well.

Ever get the impression that Van's does not want to support the 'quick build' option? 1) No manual for the quick build kit. 2) Things put together that should not have been.

Oh well....it is done now.

I was contemplating something like putting a 6-32 screw in those holes. I couldn't get to it with rivets, but I could with a small screwdriver/wrench.

Any considerations like screw strength vs. rivet strenght, etc. that I haven't thought of???

Jonathan

We are building a tip up and a very similar problem occured. We spoke to Vans who basically said whack the rivets in however. We used a bucking bar on the wrong head and bucked using a long flush set from the other side. they worked, it was difficult, when we gave it a coat of primer it looked fien !

On Drawing 25 there is a detail for tipups where a small section of the rail gets cut to allow the canopy latch clearance. This allows some access to riveting on tipups, but I don't think it helps sliders. A good structural blind rivet would certainly be OK here.

Roberta

On my slider I couldn't even get at it to pull a Cherrymax.

Neil