RV-8 Rear Floorboard Removal - ARGH
 

My recently acquired RV-8 had an intermittent Comm radio issue that I finally narrowed down to the rear stick PTT mini mic type jack. I checked the male jack and all good but wiggling it would duplicate the problem. Problem was obviosly with the other side. The female jack was located on the main floor beam which meant it was covered by the floorboard with no access. Yesterday, I started drilling out the pop rivets and didn't think it was going to be a big deal to remove it. I've now got all pop rivets out, all screws out of forward seat pan which is removed as are the footwells, in short, everything Is loose but the floorboard won't budge. Are the flap nylon bushings on top of the floorboards? Do they have nut plates? I have the plans on a thumb drive but can't find the info on this.

Lastly, I'm not going back with a cheap mini jack arrangement for connecting the rear stick PTT. Any suggestions on a better connectoR?

Thanks

Maybe abandon the rear seat PTT altogether? I don't know how you fly or with whom, so this is either a good suggestion or a lousy suggestion...

Check drawing 77. The flap blocks are screwed into the nutplates on the floor web with AN3-17A bolts. You need to remove the flap blocks before you can lift up the floor panels. You also need to drill out the rear seat piano hinge on the right side too.

The Nylon Blocks for the Flaps are sitting on top of the floorboards and yes, those bolts do have nutplates.
The rear floorboard is divided into two halves. I don´t know how your -8 is built, but if i remember correct you have to drill out the´4 or 5 outermost rivets of the rear seatrest hinge (counted from the right side, as in direction of flight) to get those two halves apart.
You also have to remove the 4 AN3 bolts of the crossbar (the one with the lightening holes in it) where the aft part of the controll collumn is attached to, underneath the fwd seat belt attach brackets. Those also have nutplates.
The rear floorboards also overlap with the baggage compartment floorboard. So you have to remove the rivets just behind the cross-tube of the flap mechanism as well.

You also have to remove the crotch strap of the aft seatbelts and you should raise the flaps to 15 -ish Degrees to get the rear floorboards out of there.

Sorry that i couldn´t give you the exact partnumbers, but currently i do not have access to my plans. Hope this helps anyways…...

I did not put my rear PTT switch on the stick for that reason. I put mine on the fwd end of the right armrest. All you have to do for good access is to remove the right side panel.

The last sentence sounds like i-know-it-all, which is not the case. It is just "Food for thought".

ARGH
 

Thanks guys!

Drawing 77 was exactly what I was searching to find. Agree with everyone that this is an absolutely terrible place to locate the PTT connector. I will need the PTT switch so I'll keep it but I will absolutely do something much better. Thanks again. Lots of work to replace one $3 connector for sure,

+1 on ptt not on passenger stick
 

Here's how I did it:



(larger image: http://www.rv8.ch/wp-content/uploads...1962551502.jpg)

We went through that drill a few years ago, we were convinced we had a wiring problem somewhere in the rear CP. It turned out to be the Sigtronics ICS. The service loop going to it was too tight (apparently), and after 20 years it caused an intermittent short inside the unit.

Just got floorboards up and female side of connector has cold solder joint. Could spin it around wire! Thanks everyone.

All this reminds me how grateful I am that I put in the extra work to make my floorboards removable with screws rather than pop rivets. Also made cut-outs and under supports around the flap blocks and also the control column hanger area, so those do not need to be disassembled.

At the time it seemed like quite a chore to install something like 250 plate nuts. In general, I used every other rivet hole for a screw, plus any key points that needed screws.

But I have had my floors up to install new equipment, route new antenna wires, check for static system leaks, other reasons at least, oh, probably 8 times now. Every time I do, I thank myself for making the floor easily removable.

This. ^
When I was trying to decide to rivet or screw the floor panels down I spent time talking with a bunch of 8 builders one year at OSH. The responses from both camps went essentially like this.
From the rivet camp. "For the times I have had to pull the floors up, drilling out the rivets isn't that hard".
From the plate nut camp. "The effort to install the plate nuts was a hassle but for the times I have had to pull the floors up it has been a breeze".

My takeaway was, at some point the floor is going to need to come up so I may as well do the hard work once, now, while the fuselage was just a canoe.