Seat Rail Advice
 

Installing seat rails today. In the process I had 2 of the corner nut plates "bend" as I attempted to insert the screw to hold them down. Removing these is a little bit of a pain, not to mention the repair of the 2 corner nutplates which are in the worst possible position. Question.... Would you build on and simply have 2 missing screws (one out of left seat, one out of right seat), or would you take the time to replace? I'm leaning toward leaving as is, but thought I'd get others opinions first. Here's some pics...

I'm pretty sure I correctly recall leaving one of my seat rail screws exactly like that. I may have drilled it out and replaced with a locknut.

I remember trying to convince myself that this area was a little over-built and that 13 screws per side would take the loads okay.

I have special feelings for cantilevered nut plates that are not printable in a family-oriented website.

If it were the screw fwd of that one, I would address it. I would not have a concern leaving the one pictured out. I also feel it is overbuilt . That said, those four fwd scres take a good amount of compressive load from cantilevered aft forces on the upper seat back.
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Larry

I would fix it or as suggested, remove the damaged plate nut and use a lock nut instead. I wouldn't leave the hole empty though.

How difficult would it be to drill out the nut plate and put the replacement in with pop rivets?

Bent nutplate
 

It looks like you could use a screwdriver and push it back in place and hold it there and get a screw in ?
Of course it sounds easier than it probably is.

I pretty sure I had to do that exact thing on mine.

I did the same thing on the single lug nutplate where the front spar attaches to the fuselage. Single lug nutplates require the white glove treatment.

Maybe there is a reason.
 

I am not a 10 guy, but I have found that the screw is usually misaligned as the root cause for having to push to get the screw started. It seems particularly prevalent with an aligning thick section.

I had this same problem about 2 weeks ago. Not in the exact same location but I was able to take a socket with ID just larger than the OD of the nutplate, and while pushing up on the bent tab, got the screw to engage in the thread
from the top side and pulled the nut plate back up.


I plan to never remove that screw again!!