Building Tip - Rudder Bottom Fairing

[f1rocket]

Have you struggled over how to fit the fairing on the bottom of the rudder without have a big square hole open? I've seen a number of ways to deal with the opening. Here's one way to fill the opening that still allows you to make the rudder bottom removable.

When you are fitting the triangular brace to the bottom rib and the large angle, fashion a couple filler pieces out of scrap aluminum. I use .063 aluminum here because the fiberglass fairing tends to be about that thickness. Cut the filler pieces long enough so that you can rivet them to the triangular piece.

Now when you fit the bottom, just cut a square opening that fits tightly to your filler pieces. This gives a nice clean look and you don't have to worry about filler cracking, or a big ugly hole anymore.

[Davepar]

These are great tips Randy. Keep 'em coming.

Dave

[penguin]

I've recently replaced the rudder bottom fairing (w/o light) on my 6A. I installed it as far aft as I could to avoid an interference with the bolts holding on the bottom hinge at large rudder angles. That meant the tab sticking up would not fit up into the rudder (I now have a small gap), and the fairing was too long - so I had to chop off a 1/4" and add more glass - modifications only result in much more work! I also sanded away some of the gel coat to try to make the joint between the rudder skin & the fairing as smooth as possible. I ended up taking off too much gell, exposing the pin holes, which to ages to fill. My advice would be to not sand off very much gell! When I rivetted the fairing on I had a choice at the most aft rivet of using a pair of holes opposite to each other, or one that was slightly further forward. I chose the two holes opposite each other - mistake. The last rivet I put in would not sit down flush as it butted up to the tail of the rivet already set, so others may like to offset the most aft rivets. Hope this helps.

Pete

[RudiGreyling]

Thats an excelent tip, keep em coming...
Now where is Doug with that Building Tip Category we so desperately need to consolidate all these nice tips..

[Davepar]

We've already got way too many forum categories. You can just search on "building tip". Or I've been collecting them at www.dualrudder.com/rvfaq/BuildingTips.

[RudiGreyling]

We've already got way too many forum categories. You can just search on "building tip". Or I've been collecting them at www.dualrudder.com/rvfaq/BuildingTips. 04-06-2005 02:43 PM

Dave......"too many categories", but you still went ahead and created your own building tips category......just pulling your leg, thank you very much for your webpage, it is very worthwhile and useful! keep it up!

Regards
Rudi

[Davepar]

Started a new topic.