[Scott_F]

In light of other self-nominations for the "DS award" elsewhere on the forum, I must confess to not being able to read in a straight line across a torque table and subsequently waaayy over-torquing the bolts that hold the fuel tank z-brackets to the spar on one of my wings. My intent this afternoon is to remove the tank and replace all the bolts and nutplates with new ones. On a more positive note, I've recently come into a nice supply of floating nutplates, so my question is - is there any reason I should not use these on the z-brackets (or anywhere else in the plane)? I have plenty of the solid ones, but wondered if there's any reason I shouldn't use the floating ones since I have them.

Thanks,

 

[plehrke]

Weight

Floating platenuts are heavier but the number you are using makes no difference. At the big aircraft company we use floating nutplates that have the replaceable nut element so they can be removed/replaced if they need to be with out having to drill out the platenut hold down rivets. I used some floating nut plates in non-structural areas in places that I did not use close tollerance holes inorder to ensure interchangeability of parts. This is places like equipment installations and none structural panels.