RV-8A builders, when you are working on the fuselage bulkheads and you get to the 811 bulkhead, you are supposed to fabricate 2 bars from 1.5" stock. First, you have to rip them down to 1" wide, which is a royal pain in the patootie. Then, you are instructed to taper the bars, as per drawing 27A. However, Dwg. 27A depicts that the bars are drilled to 10 prepunched holes in the 811 bulkhead. That drawing is dead wrong. If you drill the bars that way, there will not be enough bar sticking out at the top. Also, the holes will not be centered in the bars. Instead, contrary to dwg. 27A, you use the dimensions in dwg. 22 to drill the bars only to the top 9 holes (not 10). After drilling my bars in accordance with dwg. 27A, Vans informed me that they were wrong and that I had to fabricate new bars. That amounts to about 3 hours of work and about $25 for new bars (plus the stiff shipping charges). When I brought the defective drawing to the attention of Vans' staff, I certainly did not get the impression that they were going to change the drawings to remove the inconsistency. They also refused to help me out with the cost of the new bars. So, when you get to bulkhead 811, do not use dwg. 27A for anything but a general description about tapering the bars (which they say is not even necessary, it just saves a little weight). Use the dimensions and drilling depiction on dwg. 22 instead.
