Poor Rivet Job

[Snowflake]

Originally Posted by Jamie

Looks to me like the problem is that your spar flange is under-dimpled and not allowing the skin to lay flush.

Hmm... Looking at it after reading this, I can just about convince myself that the flange isn't dimpled at all. Perhaps that step got missed?

[cjensen]

Originally Posted by RVGator

How many of those 35 rivet holes needed a bigger rivet?

None did...just go slow and stay centered, and you won't enlarge the hole. Once the head pops off, just use a center punch and tap it thru.

[cdmiller]

It looks to me like you forgot to dimple the spar flange. As a result, the dimples on the skin have no place to fit into. Also, as someone else mentioned, there may be some metal cuttings between the skin and flange. Drill out the rivets, clean the cuttings, dimple the spar flange holes, use lots of clecos and re-rivet.

If you can't free up the spar flange for dimpling, you can probably dimple the skin and flange together at the same time.

Good luck,

Dan Miller
RV-8 N3TU 945 hours and loving it.

[RVGator]

Well, you guys were right. If I did dimple the spar I did a really bad job. I decided to drill out the top and bottom skin on the left rear spar. I re-dimpled everything together with a pneumatic squeezer then re-riveted. Here is the result.



I think I'm good on the rivet sizes as well. Of the 74 rivets I drilled out, 4 of them look marginal. Unless the pros feel differently I think I can move on.

[cdmiller]

Your fix looks great. I would say move on.

Cheers,

Dan Miller

[vmirv8bldr]

Looking good! I say build on!