Tailwheel Weldment Question

I've been working on fitting the tailwheel weldment and need a little advice. The problem is two of the rivets in F-712 are interfering with the weldment as can be see in the picture.

Both sides look about the same. I'm kind of stumped on the best course of action to take. I've considered shaving a little bit off of each rivet, but I'm not sure if that would be advisable.

As I recall, I needed to trim the arch shaped notch at the bottom of F-712 to allow the weldment to move up slightly. It's been over three years since I built that part of my 7 so give Van's a call to confirm this before you do anything.

Good luck!

DJ,

Replace those two rivets with flush head rivets in dimpled holes and problem solved.

Flush rivets, but you might need to double-flush since the VS spar rest on the aft side of the bulkhead, and I've forgotten how low it goes; it may even rest on the top of the weldment tube. You've probably found you need to open the mouse hole quite a bit to clear the weld fillet, so these rivets may even go away. Finally, several of the bottom rivets under the weldment are inaccessible to a bucking bar. Save yourself a lot of frustration and go directly to MK-319-BS pops.

John Siebold

Thanks for the advice. The problem is I put the flush head on the aft side like the plans said. Looking at it now, I think if I had put those two rivets the other way, it would have worked fine. I don't think the VS would have interfered. But now, I'm not sure if the dimples could be reversed.

Install 2 new rivets slightly outboard where they won't interfere. Then knock off the offending buck tails as needed, or drill them out completely.

Besides, after you bolt the weldment in, it isn't going any where!

vfrazier said:

Install 2 new rivets slightly outboard where they won't interfere. Then knock off the offending buck tails as needed, or drill them out completely.

Besides, after you bolt the weldment in, it isn't going any where!

Click to expand...

Vince is correct. (I deleted the message on reversing the bulkhead because I thought we were talking about F-811)

What they did with the RV-8 F-812 is eliminated the 2 inboard rivets that touch the weldment. There are just 2 rivets in that area, the outboard ones shown in the image.

Thanks for all the help. I went ahead and used Vince's method.