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J-Stiffeners Strike Again!

StressedOut

Well Known Member
Well I fell into the trap of cutting the stiffeners in Section 13 from the wrong stock size. So now I get to order two more 6 ft. stiffeners. :mad:

When I was searching through VAF I ran across posts from way back in 2013 where people were tripping over this same issue. You'd think that by this time Vans would add a simple note above Step 1 on page 13-02 saying something like "Fabricate the W-00009A and W-00009B from 8 ft. stock".

I'm pretty miffed that I have to buy new parts for lack of a simple note.

Sorry, just had to vent.
 
you mean like these notes?

Check the WIKI
 

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J-stiffeners are full of gotchas it would appear.

Watching a recent "Plane Lady" video they had to do a repair in the tailcone because she assumed the 8' pieces as supplied were exactly 8' and measured the piece by subtracting from 8' instead of measuring full length - came up a little short and the piece didn't get riveted into the bulkhead.

I had some J-channel come in one of my kits that had been stamped "backward" - the holes were in the curved section instead of the flat section. That one hurt my brain for a while until I figured it out - I assumed I was just missing something (like missing a match-drilling step - finally realized that the piece was stamped wrong). Called Van's and it was taken care of, no problem.

I had the QB wing kit from Van's and had the devil of a time figuring out how to fit the j-stiffeners that connected the installed inboard bottom section to the builder-installed outboard bottom section. Turns out the instructions at that point in time were focused on the slow build with no specific QB instructions - when I called the support line I was pointed to a section in the RV-10 plans that made it clear (but the length was different since the -14 wing is different length - had to find the right place in -14 plans for length).

The point is that nobody's perfect and stuff happens. Throwing Van's under the bus is your choice but I know I made way more mistakes in the process than they did - for every part they had to send me "free" I had to order about 10....
 
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The annoying part of messing up the J stiffeners (ask how I know) is that you always mess up the longest ones so you end up receiving a 9-foot PVC pipe in the mail and paying for the postage on it. The good part is that you won’t be tempted to add $400 worth of small parts to the order to save on shipping.

PS I messed mine up by not noticing I had two stacked together, of course not quite aligned, so the second one was cut about 1” short. If Van’s tried to document all the possible ways to mess up a J stiffener, the price of the kit would double just for the paper to print Section 5A “Don’t Mess Up Your J Stiffeners.”
 
There's actually a surprising amount of omissions, errors, and lacking guidance in the documentation that really *should* have been updated over these years. Love Vans, but they could do much better for their builders in this small but important way.
 
Painful But, actually the schooling is quite cheap if you have ever paid for college tuition.
I messed up my RV-6 turtle deck skin way back in 1991 so it never ends.
Your luck may vary Art
 
There's actually a surprising amount of omissions, errors, and lacking guidance in the documentation that really *should* have been updated over these years. Love Vans, but they could do much better for their builders in this small but important way.
If you build one of the earlier models, then you come to appreciate how awesome the 14 plans and instructions are.
Mistakes happens and that is part of the building and learning, we all have done that and hopefully learn from it.

My own J-channel woe was caused by the garage door. After finishing and match drilling the channels, I had left them in a place that I shouldn't have and got jammed and bent by closing garage door.

Hint: when you order parts that are relatively cheap but expensive to ship, order more as a spare.
 
The Old Days...........

Building airplanes is an experiment in getting all the pieces together in one place that will eventually take to the air with everything flying in the same general direction!

In the Good Old Days: My RV-4 started in 1992 and there were many things that were just plain :confused: Looking back, about a third of my time was staring at the plans, looking in the "construction instructions" and thinking......um.....what.........?? A third of my time was spent looking for things (tools, parts, "things".....why is that?) and a third of my time was spent building. Plans then were pretty good, the construction instructions a work in progress and pre-punch was what my then wife would do to me before I went out to the garage/hangar to build.

SO: things can be frustrating at times. But the quality of the kits, ease of building and the instructions are light years away from where they were back then. Still when things get screwed up and it delays your building time, extending that 1/3, it can be maddening.

Still the best airplanes on the market with the best vendor support and the best RV FORUM on the planet! And, when it is together and flying, all that frustration will be a distant memory and you'll be thinking 'which RV am I going to build NEXT?':)
 
This thread made me feel better. I just had to vent a bit. I agree the plans are top notch and I'm grateful for the time and effort that went into the design of the parts to make it harder to mess up. I hope Vans finds the time to fix little things like this for future builders.

Great community! Appreciate all you sharing your J-stiffener stories.
 
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