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Seat Rail Advice

rvanstory

Well Known Member
Installing seat rails today. In the process I had 2 of the corner nut plates "bend" as I attempted to insert the screw to hold them down. Removing these is a little bit of a pain, not to mention the repair of the 2 corner nutplates which are in the worst possible position. Question.... Would you build on and simply have 2 missing screws (one out of left seat, one out of right seat), or would you take the time to replace? I'm leaning toward leaving as is, but thought I'd get others opinions first. Here's some pics...

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I'm pretty sure I correctly recall leaving one of my seat rail screws exactly like that. I may have drilled it out and replaced with a locknut.

I remember trying to convince myself that this area was a little over-built and that 13 screws per side would take the loads okay.

I have special feelings for cantilevered nut plates that are not printable in a family-oriented website.
 
If it were the screw fwd of that one, I would address it. I would not have a concern leaving the one pictured out. I also feel it is overbuilt . That said, those four fwd scres take a good amount of compressive load from cantilevered aft forces on the upper seat back.
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Larry
 
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I would fix it or as suggested, remove the damaged plate nut and use a lock nut instead. I wouldn't leave the hole empty though.
 
Bent nutplate

It looks like you could use a screwdriver and push it back in place and hold it there and get a screw in ?
Of course it sounds easier than it probably is.
 
Maybe there is a reason.

I am not a 10 guy, but I have found that the screw is usually misaligned as the root cause for having to push to get the screw started. It seems particularly prevalent with an aligning thick section.
 
I had this same problem about 2 weeks ago. Not in the exact same location but I was able to take a socket with ID just larger than the OD of the nutplate, and while pushing up on the bent tab, got the screw to engage in the thread
from the top side and pulled the nut plate back up.


I plan to never remove that screw again!!
 
Two long shot approaches if you can't get something under there to push it up.

If you have a set of adjustable ball gauges you could insert into the hole and perhaps get through the nut plate, expand the gage and abuse it with pliers trying to pull it back square.
My guess is, you don't have ball gauges, you probably won't be able to get it through the nut plate at that angle, and if you did manage to, the nut plate may very well spring back out of square to a point you wouldn't be able to get the screw started anyway.

However, If you do have an adjustable ball gage set, I would at least give it a try, long shot that it is.

You might also try a screw down type Cleko. If (big if) you can get it inserted, you can put quite a bit of force on these if the prongs hold. You would need the exact size to make it work and still the nut plate might spring back a bit out of alignment.

I hate to see unfilled holes. Yes, perhaps over engineered. Perhaps unnecessary. You will never know unless you had an incident that fell just short of "probably toast anyway", or a perfect scenario that tested the rails to their max design criteria where one screw made the difference. Highly unlikely.....
 
I?m not looking forward to that. It?s obvious that the bend radius tolerances and stack ups of all the parts are going to make those rails a real PITA to install.
I?ve replaced a lot of nutplates with floating ones through this build but neglected the ones that will likely be the worst. Oh well.
I?d go with the socket trick or replacing the nutplate with pop rivets.
FWIW I also riveted AN3 size floating nutplates to the bottom of the gear weldments for the front seat rail bracket bolts (that go on after the gear legs are bolted on)
That makes their installation a lot easier. Putting the nutplates in was pretty straight forward.
 
I had one like this on each side of my -10. I?m getting close to completion. I drilled mine out and fixed it.

My rationale is this... the DAR is going to inspect the interior - probably with the seats removed. I imagine that if there was a screw missing that was supposed to be there and someone noticed, they?d want you to fix it anyway.

I was able to get in there with my pneumatic squeezer and take care of it easily.

My $0.02 - your mileage may vary
 
My rationale is this... the DAR is going to inspect the interior - probably with the seats removed. I imagine that if there was a screw missing that was supposed to be there and someone noticed, they?d want you to fix it anyway.

I hate it when totally rational logic forces me to do something I don?t want to do. Looks like I?ll be replacing 2 nut plates today. With 72 screws in the 4 seat rails, I was sure hoping to justify leaving out 2 of them. :)

Thanks for all the input!
 
I had one like this on each side of my -10. I?m getting close to completion. I drilled mine out and fixed it.

My rationale is this... the DAR is going to inspect the interior - probably with the seats removed. I imagine that if there was a screw missing that was supposed to be there and someone noticed, they?d want you to fix it anyway.

I was able to get in there with my pneumatic squeezer and take care of it easily.

My $0.02 - your mileage may vary

Charlie,
I'm not sure who you are using for your DAR but the one I used wanted my RV 10 in flying condition. As in he could jump in and take off. So all interior and access panel installed and cowling installed. Basically a pen exercise so don't rely on all DAR's to inspect your aircraft. When I was ready for my airworthiness, I had several mentors and AP's look it over before the expensive pen exercise. I know several DAR's on this forum actually inspect it though.
 
It seems building an airplane is a lot like "life" at times. In this case the anticipation of the challenge was much worse than the challenge itself! Fix took just a little more than an hour. Glad to report, both damaged nutplates are now properly installed and seats rails are attached with all 72 screws!

Thank you contributors for challenging me to do it right!
 
Charlie,
I'm not sure who you are using for your DAR but the one I used wanted my RV 10 in flying condition. As in he could jump in and take off. So all interior and access panel installed and cowling installed. Basically a pen exercise so don't rely on all DAR's to inspect your aircraft. When I was ready for my airworthiness, I had several mentors and AP's look it over before the expensive pen exercise. I know several DAR's on this forum actually inspect it though.

Joe - I?ve been communicating with him, getting things ready. He told me that he will start in the inside. When he moves to the outside, he will ask me to install the seats so that after he?s done outside, we can do an engine run up. He wants access panels and everything basically removed... whole tunnel needs to be open, seats out, rear bulkhead removed, etc.
 
Joe - I?ve been communicating with him, getting things ready. He told me that he will start in the inside. When he moves to the outside, he will ask me to install the seats so that after he?s done outside, we can do an engine run up. He wants access panels and everything basically removed... whole tunnel needs to be open, seats out, rear bulkhead removed, etc.

That?s good to hear you are definitely getting your monies worth there. I had a completely different experience with my DAR. In my case it really didn?t bother me because I already had serval people look everything over multiple times. Like many things, not all DAR?s are created equal.
 
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