Quote:
Originally Posted by BobTurner
+1 good idea.
|
+2 on Bavafa's suggestion to try prying forward on the tank, gently. Yes, this is worth a try. My hunch would be that the stripped threads will not want to allow a clean thread to get started again, but it might. If it does, twice, you are home free.
If not, drilling the heads off the bolts is the best approach I can see. You can either remove a portion of the lower skin, or you could cut an additional inspection port in the skin directly where the bolt is. It is going to have to extend aft far enough for you to get an angle drill in there with a short drill.
When you are done, you will have to make a cover for the hole. You can copy the way the standard inspection ports are made so the cover is flush, or you could just lap a cover over the outside of the skin. No one is going to look under there, so it really only matters to you.
Wow, it is really hard to strip a plate nut! Or a AN bolt. I would be about as happy with that employee as I would be of the guy that drilled a hole in the skin of the Soyuz!