Rear fuse skin dents

[PIN 37]

Can anyone tell me if there is a way to remove these dents caused by riviting, apart from de-riviting and fitting packers. Everthing looked ok before setting the rivits, but now not so good.

[IMG][/IMG]

[Pmerems]

One method that might work is placing a flat steel plate on the outside and hitting the shop head. I used a hardwood block and a hammer. I curve the end of the hardwood block so that it will only contact the shop head.

It may be hard to get inside the aft section. You will need a helper to hold the steel plate flat against the skin.

This will help fix the dents but may not completely solve the problem. You can always fill the defects prior to painting.

[mcencula]

Although it sounds like you're opposed to using spacers, that's what I did. It wasn't much work and the results came out great.

Before (notice dished in areas at rivets):


Rivets drilled out and shim thickness determined (0.032 on top, then down to 0.025 and 0.016):


Shims drying on the priming rack (I made a few extras):


After shimming and re-riveting (used a half length longer rivet than original):


Good luck!

[swisseagle]

Hello!

Intersting thread, I'm at the absolute same position to build.

I have seen a few RV-7 that have this phenomen at the bulkhead F-708. It looks just awfull ... so that I looked very well how does the skin laying on that bulkhead.

I was not surprised to see, that there was a gap up to 1.4mm at top center, less and less to the side.

It really looks that Vans should check the design, drawings and the tooling for the hydroforming. Because it really looks that this bulkhead is a bit to far forward or to low on height.

So I made shimms from 0.040 down to 0.016, primed them today. The riveting and final result will be done in a few weeks. I want to finish first all the stuff in this section before closing it.

Just follow the pictures/description of mcencula

Regards,

Dominik