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Wing Tips

PeteP

Well Known Member
I am having a bear of a time trying to get the wing tips to align with the ailerons. I have jiged the ailerons to neutral. The left tip is about 1/4" out of align ment but the right wing tip refuse to align to within about 1 & 1/2" without modifying the tip. Anyone have suggestions on how to resolved it?
 
So you are unable to move the trailing edge of the tip in alignment with the neutral aileron position? On mine there was plenty of play in either direction. The whole wing tip sort of is able to rotate in the wing airfoil shape and as it moves around you can work the trailing edges into alignment. Do you have the wing tip trimmed properly? It could be hitting the aft wing spar.

If you can push the trailing edges into position, all you need to do is match drill the aft wing skin holes with the tip (#40 drill) and a couple of clecos should hold it in position enough to get the rest of the holes drilled. Eventually these holes get enlarged to hold a #6 screw, so there is some room for you later to fine tune the alignment.
 
Don't try to align the leading edge perfectly. Fit the trailing edge alignment. You'll need to use fiberglass and filler to shape the leading edge to fit the wing perfectly later on.
 
WIng Tips

Sounds like my mistake lies in fitting the wing tip to conform to the wing and drilling the tip before verfying the aileron match. I have already verified the clearance with the aft spar and aileron hinge. I'll look at Bruce's idear tonight and see if that works. If so I guess I'll need to do some glass work to repair the previously drilled holes. Oh well, what another day or two after the years of work on this bird.
 
Mine did not fit on either side on the RV6 I am finishing. The tips were the new version with the lights. I cut open the trailing edge, aligned them, clamped them and then put fiberglass on the seam - inside and out - and then sanded it all.
It is stable and works fine.
 
Wing tip update

I was able to get the left wingtip into alignment and drilled by clamping the aft end to the aileron trailing edge. A little funky at the leading edge but can be worked out. Right wingtip.... another story. After using the same procedure on the right as I had on the left, there was quite a pucker in the top aft portion of the wing tip. Finally just sucked it up and conducted dremel tool surgery on it. Epoxied in three layers of glass on the interior of the tip and clamped it back in place. Today it had dried and was well aligned so I used filler to smooth the outer surface and will sand it out tomorrow.

I don't know if the right wing tip was malformed when built or just warped over time but it was never going to fit now without surgery.
 
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I was able to get the left wingtip into alignment and drilled by clamping the aft end to the aileron trailing edge. A little funky at the leading edge but can be worked out. Right wingtip.... another story. After using the same procedure on the right as I had on the left, there was quite a pucker in the top aft portion of the wing tip. Finally just sucked it up and conducted dremel tool surgery on it. Epoxied in three layers of on the interior of the tip and clamped it back in place. Today it had dried and was well aligned so I used filler to smooth the outer surface and will sand it out tomorrow.

I don't know if the right wing tip was malformed when built or just warped over time but it was never going to fit now without surgery.

Welcome to the club! This is SOP for the wing tips. A bit of cutting, glassing, filling and you're good.
 
Mine did not fit on either side on the RV6 I am finishing. The tips were the new version with the lights. I cut open the trailing edge, aligned them, clamped them and then put fiberglass on the seam - inside and out - and then sanded it all.
It is stable and works fine.

This is not very difficult. My RV-6 was started by someone else and the wing tips were drilled, but the aileron was not in alignment. The procedure above is quite common and not that difficult. I told one of the tech's at Van's that I did this and he told me I was nuts and that it was unnecessary.

Larry
 
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