closing elevators / preventing corrosion

[Daida]

hello out there......

yesterday i was closing my elevators. while bending the leading edges from the right elevator i noticed that the upper skin is overlapping the lower. This prevents water, if the aircraft is parked outside during a rainshower, from sneaking in between the skin and cause corrosion. it will just run over the overlapping sheet metal and drop down without doing any bad.

on the left elevator it is the other way around. lower skin overlaps upper skin. though water might be able to sneak through and cause corrosion.

i know that the skin-ends are longer and shorter, the plans say to make the longer end the overlapping. in my understanding there should be no difference in bending radius, structure strength or anything else if you would overlap the upper skin over the lower skin on the left elevator.

how did you do it????
is it of any importance anyways????


greetings

daida

[flion]

It should not greatly matter (after all, you have those big gaping holes at the hinge bearings letting water in forward of the spar anyway). If you have primed the skins, even water wicked into the joint will not cause a problem (and water can wick against gravity if the joint is tight).

Without the RV-7 plans in front of me, I can't verify your statement that there is a 'shorter' and 'longer' skin. On the -10 and -6 there was no difference and so the top skin went over the lower on my projects. I would assume that this would work in the -7 but perhaps -7 builders can tell you for sure. If you can, that's what I'd do for extra piece of mind.

[Daida]

hi out there.....

thanks for the reply, but living in germany sometimes comes with a time problem with answers from the forum. i wouldn?t want to wait until tomorrow so i closed the elevators today as i planned to do it. upper skin overlapping lower skin. worked out great.

thanx a lot anyway.

thread is closed.

daida