W

william weesner

thinking of fitting the wings this weekend
 
Last edited:
couple more wing mounting thoughts

Yup, read the Vans extra material a few times. Then you need to make a decision about how you want to check for flap fit where it "kisses" (to use Vans term) the bottom of the fuse. Trim your rear spar on the wing per instructions, then mount wings and clamp in place, again per angle of incidence instructions, etc, etc. Remount your flaps and bring them up in trail. If you are lucky, they will fit nicely. Generally (IMHO) they don't. You will then have to decide whether you wish to adjust the angle of incidence to optimize that fit, making it the same on both wings of course, or not. If you do decide to do so, you will need to remeasure and re-shim your HS per Vans instructions, which is no big deal mechanically. If you don't you may decide to cut off the flap material if the fit is not right. In my case, all measurements were optimized, the rear spar hole was nailed dead center with abundant clearance from edges.. and I had to cut off the piece of skin on the flap (or I suppose one could have made a fiberglass layup to take up misfit where the flaps did not "kiss" the bottom of the fuse). If the misfit is any more than 1/8" or so, you will have trouble joggling the metal to fit. Advice in sum? Mount and clamp the wings, fit the flaps, and do nothing until the next day when you decide what would be required to make everything fit optimally including all critical clearances.
Hope this helps a little.
Regards,

Len
N72ML, tipper, dual Cheltons/all glass
OSH with much, much luck
 
Get some hardware store bolts and taper them to fit into the outer four 1/4" holes on each side. You really don't need to put in the inner 7/16" bolts for the intial fitup and you don't need to install the nuts and tighten the bolts. Use some oil to help slide them in. Worked fine for me.

Roberta
 
Take the #10 bolts out of the triangular gussets and remove the gussets. They're kinda in the way. Most guys will slightly enlarge the holes in the gussets to keep from fighting them during final installation. (These have nothing to do with the heavy duty spar) They sit in front of it in the corner you're trying to put the bolts in. The 7/16's bolts go through them to tie in the fuselage side.

Make sure your holes are clean through the spars in the wings and center section. Those bolts are pretty tight. The slightest burr will make you think the bolts don't fit. NEVER drill anything to make them fit. You can use a rubber mallet to help but don't start slamming them with a regular hammer. A little lubricant can also help.

Get someone else to wiggle up and down...left and right.

Watch your trailing edge spar fitting -making sure it slides in between the two bars.

Note the steel bracket that attaches to the inboard tank rib. Is it in front of or behind the extruded piece on the tank.

Use saw horses under the wing to help support it

Don't trim your trailing edge spar again. You probably already did way back when. I'm talking about that angled cut at the rear spar where the 5/16th's bolt goes. It's easy to think it may need to be trimmed because of how your wing trailing edge may butt up against the fuselage. Don't do it. I fooled myself into thinking I may have forgotten the step. I trimmed it again. Two seconds after that I realized I had already done it. Now I was just shy of required Edge Distance on a 5/16ths hole. I had to completely drill off the upper skin and remanufacture the entire .125 spar doubler stackupand then reinstall. That was the single most stupid thing I did on the airplane.
Three days later I was moving forward again.

Good luck...you've reached an exciting moment

John
http://experimentalrv7.com
P1010031.JPG
 
Last edited:
Regarding clean holes, I found a real cool round brass wire brush at the local industrial hardware supply. It's intended use is cleaning valve guides, but when chucked in a drill it worked beautifully for removing primer from the spar holes. A little acetone and a couple of seconds did the trick. If you've got one of those newfangeld anodized spars, disregard all this. :D
 
You must log in or register to reply here.